A Totally Random Story About Politics

Every election year I say I’m going to help out and I never do. I think about volunteering, making phone calls, or maybe even writing a political blog. I want to call it Strange Bedfellows, but unfortunately strangebedfellows.com is taken by someone incredibly selfish who isn’t even using it. And since this blog is mostly about horror movies and stupid crap I think about, I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to be coming here for my opinion on politics, which I can sum up in two words:

I’M DONE.

Here’s a story:

It’s 1992. The L.A. riots happen. Mike Tyson is convicted of rape. Basic Instinct and the Alice In Chains album Dirt come out. Amy Fisher shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco. Woody Allen grosses everyone out by getting it on with his girlfriend’s daughter and Dan Quayle can’t spell the word potato.

I was living in San Francisco in 1992 for the election between Bill Clinton and incumbent George Bush. It was the first year I could vote and I knew almost nothing about either guy because I was young and didn’t care. One night I see Clinton play the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and that decides it for me. I vote for the slick one.

That day something happened I’ll never forget: Clinton won, and San Francisco lost its freaking mind. Everywhere you went people were screaming, honking their car horns, hugging each other and carrying on like it was Lake Placid and the American hockey team had just beat the Russians. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably 12 and I pretty much hate you.) A democrat had won, a first since 1976. Liberals had won. Gays were stoked, as were people who prefer not to be shot to death. More people went to school, made money and bought houses. We had a bitchin’ economy and no debt. So really, everyone won.

That’s also the day I realized how personal politics are.

I rarely say anything about what’s going on in the world on social media, mostly because I don’t like arguing with people and because it’s pointless. Nobody is going to change anyone’s minds about abortion no matter how many bloody hangers drawn in the shape of the words Project 25 you post. Facts are meaningless to some, and willful ignorance is real. I would say you know who you are, but apparently you don’t. I’ve blocked most of you anyway, which may sound petty, but it’s not funny anymore. Wake up. He is unfit. #SorryNotSorry.

I had a Twitter account for a minute under the name Lomi Tahren (as in the uber-conservative, gun-loving chick Tomi Lahren, but not). Lomi liked to put nasty comments in response to Tweets from people like Ann Coulter, who writes books calling Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution a “liberal creation myth” and doesn’t think women should have the right to vote. Then I got put in Twitter detention for calling her a wench and I never got back to it. I only had like 100 followers anyway. I’ve learned snark, one of my favorite things, will get you nowhere. In fact, this started out as a very different and angry rant, but the last time I wrote one of those I mentioned I was going to burn my American flag and people got all upset. I understood. Politics are personal. And I would have gone through with it but honestly, I’m terrified of fire and I didn’t want to be the idiot who purposely started one in my backyard and ended up burning the house down.

I hope this November I’ll get to see another massive celebration. Maybe we’ll go to San Francisco, where people are free to be who they are. Scream if you’re for her. ♥