A little under three years ago, I began this blog. Not really knowing what I was doing, or what this whole "blog" thing was about, I've picked it up and set it aside many times over the years, once for nearly a year in itself.

Looking back through this blog the other day, it struck me how much I've changed as a person. I've never been one to keep a diary, but I imagine it was much like discovering a journal you kept in high school and boggling at the person you were then and are now as you read through it. It's also remarkable, though, how there's that little spark of yourself that essentially stays the same throughout your life.

Much of this blog devoted itself to cataloguing the battles I've had with my health, the misery of living in Missouri and Our Big Move to the "promised land" (a.k.a. Orange County, CA). But, because of the time and place in our history, much has also been devoted to all things politick.

I've always had an interest in politics, much the same way I've always had an interest in religion: I was zealous about neither, but I found the ways they effected our society and culture fascinating. I still remember the first vote I ever cast, for Clinton in '92 as a college freshman, and the feeling of being a part of something so big and important. Standing in line with literally hundreds of other students waiting to make our small contribution to the democratic process, the so-called "Gen X" apathy with which we’d been labeled was nowhere to be seen. We were excited, pumped, to cast our vote thanks in part to MTV's newly launched "Rock The Vote" campaign. Clinton with his saxophone; boxers or briefs. And when our hero won, a relatively young Bill Clinton who was fun and could joke and was just dripping with optimism, as opposed to Bush Sr. who looked like someone had their hand up his ass and was working him like a puppet, we felt like WE had won. Youth had triumphed over the stodgy warmongers. Newness had ousted business as usual. Clinton made us feel like politics could be fun and interesting, and that WE had made a difference by putting him in office. And many of us didn’t loose our interest after the election was over.

It was the same year so many of us took to joining student political organizations, volunteering for campaigns, demonstrating for various causes, and wanting very desperately to be radical. But this was in the safe and sound early '90s, when there wasn’t much to be “radical” about. I decided to be a feminist and added a women studies minor to my curriculum, joined NOW and marched with Planned Parenthood. I read a lot of Virginia Wolf and Zora Neal Hurston. I flirted with Libertarianism because our university's chapter was filled with people who were so different from the vanilla Democrats I knew - the ones who worried over a native breed of squirrel that was being endangered by the proposal of a new parking lot for commuting students. These wacky Libertarians preached total laissez faire government, anarchy really, and demonstrated how much fun a hands-off society could be by sneaking into the upper decks of the college library and piling entire shelves of books on the floor. We attempted to wreak havoc with the university's student council by giving our organization the same acronym as the Student Association and papering the campus with our own misleading posters at student election time, and we petitioned thousands of students to change our school mascot to the aforementioned endangered squirrel. The Fighting Squirrels! Oh, we were just on the cutting edge of gonzo politics, proving to everyone the absurdity of the "system" through our own absurd behavior! Weren't we brilliant and unusual? We thought so. We were actually more like Fight Club's Project Mayhem with a curfew, midterms and meal cards.

Fast-forward eight years. Long gone out of college and now a quasi grown-up Democrat, namely because I was raised in an entirely immersive, hard-right conservative environment: Oklahoma. One of those fly-over states filled with single-issue voters more concerned about guns and abortions and “Good Christian Values” than they are about getting fucked by their beloved Republican officials. I was also raised in the church and I'm now an atheist, so you do the math. Anyway, it's eight years since my carefree days of pretending to be a Libertarian, and long since the time I realized that Libertarians were little more than undecided or single-issue Republicans. I and I knew what conservativism was all about and I knew I didn't like it. Other than that, I really didn't think about politics all that much. And I'm standing in line in my new home of St. Louis, MO and I'm waiting to do my civic duty in the 2000 election. I've decided to vote for Gore namely because I knew very little about Bush except for I didn't like his father and the fruit very rarely falls far from the tree. What I did know of Dubya was that he had sworn to roll back Roe v. Wade, which was a huge red flag to me that this was a person who had no qualms about conceding to the very people from whom I'd fled in moving to St. Louis: evangelical, über-hard right conservative, end-of-days christians. I didn't want that scary sect of people having any pull in our White House, so I went with Gore. I actually liked Gore. I did, and still do, think he is one of the most intelligent people to step foot in the White House and one of the few who really believed that the whole process could work for all of us.

So I'm standing in line with my neighbors waiting to vote in the 2000 election. Those around me are the elderly Russian immigrants and African-Americans who compromise the bulk of the population of the area, with a smattering of round-heeled students of the "Harvard of the Midwest", Washington University in St. Louis. I felt something akin to the emotions of my first voting experience... I was surrounded by neighbors and Americans who wanted to do their part as a citizen of this country, and boy, was that cool. Try as I might, I just couldn't be cynical at a moment like that. And as we stood in line, passing the time with chitchat and small, polite jokes, I noticed a strange thing happening. A young, black woman is at the check-in table having a heated conversation with one of the registration volunteers. She's trying to show the volunteer the reminder card she received in the mail that told her to vote at this location on this day. The volunteer is running her finger down the list of eligible voters on her rolls and the young woman's name is no where to be seen. A little more searching, and the volunteer tells the woman that she is supposed to be voting at another station... across town. The young woman is trying to explain, again, about the card and how she had to get someone to watch her baby so she could come here and that she wouldn't be able to get to the other poll before it closed. And the volunteer says that there’s nothing she can do, and the young woman leaves with a look on her face more like utter defeat than frustration. This would be sad on its own, but not unusual – polling mistakes happen. What was unusual was that I saw this happen three more times before I got to the front of the line and it was my turn to cast my vote. Every one of the people they turned away because they were at the “wrong” voting station was black.

With this still on my mind as I returned home from the polls, something even more disturbing was in the works. Before Florida became famous for its voting debacle, St. Louis was entrenched in one of its own. Hundreds of voters, like the ones I saw firsthand, were turned away from the polls due to registration problems. Thousands more in St. Louis City, mainly black and Democratic, were told that their voting stations would stay open late due to the registration discrepancies, only to be turned away when the courts overturned the decision to hold late polling. Republicans were howling over supposed voter fraud, and the Democrats were concerned about the number of African-American voters who were denied a vote. And the disenfranchisement was only just starting, all over the country. And then we all saw just how much each of our votes counted, and were shocked at how easily they could be tossed aside.

The 2000 election peaked my interest in politics, especially after learning more about the players in the Bush Administration. The nomination of John Ashcroft, notorious in Missouri for his radical right-wing blend of politics and christian dogma, clinched the gut feeling that I’d had that this was an Administration that needed to be watched very closely and trusted very little. And then 9-11 happened... and everything was turned on its head.

Three years ago, one part of us woke up and one part of us went to sleep. We woke up to the fact that we weren’t invincible, safe behind invisible borders and removed from the ugly parts of the world. We woke up to the fact that there were some people who were willing to go to unbelievable lengths to make their point, and that they’d do it to us. Not to someone else, which is what we were used to. And then we went to sleep. We went on autopilot and gave almost unlimited and unchecked power to those in control to handle the situation in a way that was in the best interest of this country. We slept while they told us they were going to smoke the “evildoers” out of their holes, yet failed to fulfill this promise. We slept when they told us that, despite the fact that the majority of those who had attacked us were Saudi Arabian, Saudi Arabia was our friend and ally and that no action would be taken against them. We slept while questions creeped in about just how little this Administration had done to prevent this attack in the first place. And we slept when this President made the case for war with Iraq, forgetting bin Laden, and blurred the lines between the hijackers and the old Bush Family foe, Saddam Hussein.

Something in me woke up after 9-11. I was no longer on the sidelines politically. This was my chance to stand up for what I believed in, and the internet provided an amazing resource to do so. I could find like-minded individuals and actually do something about all of the things that concerned me, even if it just meant speaking out. Like in this blog. I'm just a little voice in the big, collective shout, but it's proven to be a powerful shout. We've seen how effective the internet can be politically, and now some blogs are as respected as some "legitimate" news sources. And we've seen how the other side, those opposed to progress and change, have scrabbled to keep up. Attempts at forming online conservative political communities, such as Free Republic, show just how far some of these people have to go to meet the technical sophistication of the plethora of progressive communities found on the internet. The few thriving communities that these folks have, like Free Republic, suffer from a "Closed Border" syndrome that discourages opposing opinions or any real conversation on issues. Essentially, they are echo chambers. The success of progressive blogs and communities, such as Democratic Underground, Eschaton or Daily KOS is due in part to the fact that most progressives have a better grasp of the technical underpinnings and potential power of this medium as well as encouraging all points of view into their discussions. As progressive blogs grow in number and influence, we may be witnessing one of the greatest changes to take place since 9-11 - the way that news is processed and investigated. As conventional news sources have tended more to tabloid sensationalism, infotainment and shrieking-head pundits over the last few years, we may soon see the day where people get their news and information almost exclusively from the internet. Blogs are sure to play a huge role in this shift.

So, much like my feelings while re-reading through the last through years of this blog, I wonder about the other changes this nation has gone through over the last three years. How are we different today after these attacks? Have we grown stronger and smarter in how we protect ourselves from this kind of attack happening again? Have we grown weaker and more naive in the level of power we allot to our government to handle this threat and in our unwavering support of a President who has proven himself untrustworthy on many different levels?

Three years from now, I’ll look back again on this blog and ask the same questions of this country and myself. I hope that I’ll be somewhat smarter and stronger then than I am now. I hope the same things for this country. The only conclusion I’ve been able to draw from the experiences of the last three years is that it sometimes takes times of great trial in order for growth to take place. I think 9-11 was a catalyst for America. Eventually, after all the wars and political corruption and everything else that’s come after this event, this country will grow in a new direction. That’s what history has proven time and again. This is evidenced by the surge in people who are trying to drag this country, through policy or action, back in time. They are terrified of change and progress. But we have no choice – 9-11 changed us. There’s no going back. And what we’re witnessing politically, right now, will also change us. It may take another four years of Bush, but it will happen. This country is racked with growing pains. It wants to change and progress for the better, and it is scaring the shit out of people who are terrified by that prospect. And now there’s an entirely new generation of young people, like me back in ’92, who are excited about changing the process. Only this time they actually do have something to be “radical” about. We have to feed into their optimism and keep them focused on their goal. We’re going to need them to help us rebuild this country after the Bush Administration is finished wringing it dry.

Some other thoughts on 9-11:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-families11sep11,1,6720636.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1317&ncid=742&e=11&u=/ucas/20040905/cm_ucas/fightagainstterrorismrequiresfacingunpleasantfacts

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20040911/ap_on_re_us/sept_11_anniversary

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/230786p-198204c.html

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19839/

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI11Aa01.html