Time to Move to Canada?

I was a wreck yesterday. There are a couple of family stuffs. Remember Cousin in Italy? Well, apparently they are having a party for him and everyone was invited but me. My dad asked if I was invited. He said he is not going because I wasn't invited. It's nice to have someone on your team.

But the big news of the night was the shitty election. In case you don't know, Scott Brown, a republican, was voted into the senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy. He is the 41st republican in the senate. He has said that he will vote against the health care bill. Now the democrats are short one vote. Dammit.

I spent part of my weekend calling people reminding them to vote. I called 50 people and there were somewhere around a million calls made total. I know it is crazy, but I almost felt like the election results were a personal attack. Obviously it is not, but once the snowball starts rolling, all sorts of crazy ideas come into my head.

One thing I was thinking about is my mother. She has terminal cancer and it looks as though she will spend her last years worrying about hospital bills. I do not want to live in a world where people do not have access to basic health care. Nor do I want to raise my child in that world.

I do not want to live in a world that denies people basic things, like marriage.

I understand that people have different beliefs. I understand that some people believe that homosexuality is an abomination (so is shrimp, but that is a different rant) but what I do not understand is why they must force their beliefs on the rest of us. I want to live in a world where people are equal. They don't have to like each other, or what each other does, just live and let live.

Anyways, moving on to the point of this post, I found a way to make myself calm down and take stock. I thought about Martin Luther King Jr. Once upon a time, about 50 years ago, black people were segregated from white people. They could not use the same bathrooms, go to the same schools, sit on the same bus seats. Then going a little farther back, women did not have equal rights. Once upon a time, I wouldn't have even been able to vote.

But people like Martin Luther King Jr fought against these injustices. And they did not win every battle. But eventually, things got better. God knows, there is still rampant racism, sexism, anti-semitism, but things are better. If MLKJ just threw up his hands and relocated to a more tolerant country, he'd still be alive, perhaps, but maybe blacks and whites would still have separate drinking fountains.

Change is slow. There will be set backs. I believe that people are good in their hearts even if the polls say otherwise. Things are not perfect, by any means, but at least I am able to vote. One hundred years ago I wouldn't have been able to. I can just keep fighting the good fight of equality and teaching my son to, as well.