sundown on the union

so although there didn't used to be a correlation between blogging and midterms, lately, that seems to be the trend. at least, that's the excuse i'm going with. other candidates included

• "i've had nothing interesting to say,"
• "i've been entertaining guests of the highest order like the prime minister of foreign governments and rock stars whose names will go unmentioned due to PR people breathing down my neck,"
• "piles of laundry have built up in my room to the point where accessing my computer involves sitting high atop a mountain of jeans and sweatshirts while using the tip of a hockey stick to reach the keyboard,"
• "my roommates have shackled me to my living room couch and forced me to watch so much tv that a caitlyn's-ass-indent has formed in the sofa, so comfortable that it prevented me from getting up ever."

hey, those things could have been true. but mostly i just had midterms. which brings me to what i was doing when i should have been studying for said midterms.

as the majority of the small circle of people who actually read this thing already know (all the way through, right guys?), i spent this past weekend in reno, nevada. we canvassed neighborhoods, informing registered democrats about Early Voting, encouraging them to get to the polls early and to bring their friends, even offered them rides. i was originally going to spend this entry talking in detail about the highlights of the trip, but as the days pass and the memories fade (i have the retention of an 89 year old), i'm left with less and less to say about what actually went down.

so instead of going on about my experiences with voters--which were, for all intents and purposes, some of the most rewarding i've had--i'd rather talk about the overall impact this had on me. i was trying to explain to connor about why this is important to me, the doing, the activism, the stuff. can i really make an individual difference?

the answer is no, and any realist will tell you that whether i go to nevada and walk my feet off or stay home and talk my head off, the election will do what it's gonna do. but that's obviously not what i was thinking about when i hopped in a car with a group of strangers and drove to nevada. so the hope is that maybe my going is helping the country change. american politics is a slow, painful process. it is trite, it is power play, it is cut throat, it is not for the faint of heart, it is boring, it is disillusioning, it is ultimately what makes democracy imperfect. but then there are the people that are governed by politics. and what makes this thing work is the belief that people themselves can be the instruments of change.

i wouldn't have gotten involved in all of this if i didn't have a cause that is worthy of my time and effort. but i think that the cause is real, and i think that people are generally better than anyone gives them credit for. so i go door to door, and i have a conversation. it's a conversation with mr. wright who is 78 and has voted in every election since the truman administration, with young voters who aren't sure if they can go to the polls if they didn't vote in the last election, with people who have signs in their yard for propositions i've never even heard of. i'm not from nevada.

but mostly, and most importantly, it's a conversation with a neighborhood of people that i would normally have never met. when you think about nevada in terms of the general election, (if you're like me), you think "swing," you think 5 electoral votes. if you're normal, you probably think of casinos and desert. but now i also think of people who are making a difference in their state by choosing to exercise their rights and responsibilities as voters. and if i had anything to do with any of those people participating in the process, then what more can i really ask for?

part of me wondered not only whether or not what i was doing mattered, but whether what i was doing was necessarily right. to begin with, i was only knocking on the doors of registered democrats. is it right to walk past the front doors of houses that support the other guy, just because we disagree? moreover, what understanding do i as a californian have in the lives of the working people of washoe county? and i'm still not convinced that there's nothing wrong with it.

i read a great article that the new york times put out about the works of the (now) late deconstructionalist jacques derrida last friday, called "the real meaning of deconstruction." i can't find the link right now, but one of the author's points of consideration was derrida's insistence on the breakdown of society around the exclusivity of "causes." in our society, people who support an insitution or organized will inevitably exclude and eventually repress oppositional forces, which thereby upset and destablize the structure of whatever organization has gained power. this idea (simplified and probably butchered as it is under my supervision) fundamentally describes so much of the american political system as i have seen it.

yet what struck me about the conclusions that derrida made were not these obvservations of bifurcation. (indeed, jon stewart made similar observations when he discredited cnn's "crossfire," and although i love paul deglaa, stewart had a point in line with these considerations of polarization.) so what was really remarkable for me was the idea that we can form less rigid constructs within our society, less resistent to opposition and therefore more ethical and capable of accepting revision.

some of the rhetoric used at the ACT (america coming together) pre-canvass meeting seemed to inherently contradict this rhetoric. they talked about "turning nevada blue" and swinging things the other way, establishing yet another order of polarized politics. and that's part of it. but i think it goes deeper than that, at least for me.

when people ask me why i want to participate in a system so much that i'd brave reno to do it, i don't know that "turning nevada blue" is la réponse essentielle. yeah, it's a goal. but it's not the cause. participation in american politics is my way of putting the stamp on how the world is. if i choose to ideologically accept or reject the actions of the government, at least i know that i'm doing it on my terms. the polarization is not the process, nor does it have to be. we can agree to disagree on issues and still cooperate under the same fundamental identity. i want to get bush out of the white house partly because i think he's a bad president, but also because i think that he is a divisive figure.

of course we know that anybody in power will suffer similarly from the consequences a divided electorate, as my PS103 professor reminds us all too frequently. and nothing in the modern evolution of the political system has indicated that there will be a massive shift in these efforts. but i don't think it's the efforts of the system that have the most potential. it's my hope that the efforts of people can do what our politicians can't. when i fight for a cause i believe in, i'm not just fighting for the cause--i'm also fighting for all causes. in this country, we get to have causes, which is pretty great. by choosing one, i get a sense that i'm choosing me, believing in us, and working for everyone.

sesame street talk? yeah, i'll give you that. i'll also give you that idealism doesn't have a place in the kind of politics that i'm used to. but my fear is that the escapist behavior that gets us out of trying is the same kind that got us into this mess. should we shut the door on possibility? how can we? nevada is a cause, not a competition. this country could be too.

plus, i totally violated state law in a casino on friday night. how's that for a cause?