Happy as a Pirate, but with Reservations...

Okay, I *am* happy about the turnover in the election to the Democrats, but I am a little hesitant to think this will make all the woes of American culture go away. Why? Well, writing an email to a friend tonight, I found myself bringing some of this up, and will just cut and paste that part to explain myself a little further:

"Yes, this election was really weird. I woke up with a new Democratic Senator and lots of Democratic Representatives and a new Democratic Governor, which we haven't had in years and years here, which all automatically made me feel safer, until I thought about all the anti-gay marriage amendments that passed on the same day, and how the new Democratic governor of Pennsylvania is anti-abortion rights and anti-gay marriage rights as well, and yet he's somehow a Democrat, right? And shouldn't I feel safer? But why all of a sudden do I not, because really there seems to be no difference between the people the Democrats had to run with the conservative messages they had to carry in order to get back into power to begin with and the Republicans they've displaced. I'm hoping the Dems were just doing what they had to in order to get back into power and that eventually they'll move people towards the line of liberal thinking as they seemed to be doing in the nineties, after edging them there for a while slowly, so that the masses don't go into shock about allowing other people the rights to their own lives. I don't know. All I do know is that if in a couple of years I don't see some of this homophobia and right to life issues the politicians are using so deliberately to manipulate the public into voting for them, I'm possibly going to leave the country again in a fit of despair over the staggeringly fearful and ignorant state the culture is in at the moment.

"Today at school I went into the Dean of Arts and Sciences office to ask if they had any applications for admission to YSU for prospective students. The girl working the front desk, always students who work part time at the university, which I did myself for several years, furrowed her brows and said, "The who?" I said, "For people who want to go to school here," and she said, "Oh," and looked very relieved and said, "No, I don't think we have anything like that here." Then she picked her magazine back up and started reading again. I know that's not representative of the entire population, but some days it certainly feels like it."