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I got so worked up while watching the 2004 presidential election results come in. I kept watching all those states turn Republican-Red and I got mad and anxious and my stomach started cramping up around 10:30 PST when FOXNEWS had W sitting at 269 electoral votes. Laurel got worried about me and made me turn off the TV. By the time I went to bed at 1:00 AM, I was resigned to the fact that my presidential pony lost. Laurel lay next to me and was really quiet. I asked her is something was wrong and she said “He just couldn’t have won… I’m so mad… How?!” I woke up around 6:00 and turned on the TV hoping beyond hope and I was greeted with W’s face plastered on my screen with a nanny-nanny-boo-boo shit-eating grin. I got pissed all over again.
My hopes for a “crunchy” president were dashed. W won, despite his horrific environmental record. Living on the West Coast, where he is considered almost demonic, I was out of touch with 51% of the voters in the South and Middle America. I didn’t see the defeat coming. I thought about wallowing in grief and anger for a while, but I have decided to move on and double my small efforts to make sure this administration doesn’t have a free and easy time raping the land, lessening environmental laws, encroaching on our constitutional rights or making it easier for business to operate above the law.
I have spent four years proselytizing on the president's assault on our forests, wilderness, wetlands and wildlife habitats. I am just one person and only my friends, immediate family and the two or three people who read my website hear my rantings. I am making it a point to change all of that: I plan to research all the causes near and dear to me so that I am capable of frank, knowledgeable, honest and pointed discussions. My congressional representatives and state senators will be getting all sorts of letters and e-mail from me. I will vote for environmental candidates in local elections. I will give more money to the Sierra Club’s lobbying effort. I will “win friends and influence people” on congressional committees and in the EPA. And, I will break half my rule about not discussing politics or religion in public and tell anyone who will listen about the importance of America’s water health, her wild places and their own backyards.
Why now am I lighting a fire under my ass for the environment? Well, did you listen to George W. Bush’s acceptance speech? He is a very happy man. He is a man who now thinks that he has the mandate of “the people” and a mandate from God to enforce his will, beliefs and terrible judgment on America and the entire world. Reduced emissions in the next four years? Nope. Needed funding for the National Park service? No way. Drilling in Alaska and Yellowstone? Sure. Logging in National Parks? Why the hell not? What are the American people going to do? Fire him? Not re-elect him? Without individual activism, we’re screwed.
~Matt
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