May we see many many changes in this year. I live in a state divided with each other and separate from the rest of the nation. I feel that federal laws have no meaning here, federal money being turned away like it was an offering from Satan hiself.
In Wisconsin the United States laws only apply if Scott Walker agrees to them. Hence we are going to pretend the Affordable Care Act does not exist and forgo compliance with them. To his credit (not as much credit, however that he takes for it) he did comply with lifting caps on long term care. Because he was forced to by the federal government.
But there is no guessing what rights you actually have (first amendment?) anymore. And that unfortunately is true across most of the country right now.
So although I did write that I hope that everyone has a happy new year I do not mean the kind of happy, go to work, come home and pretend everything is okay kind of happy. I mean happy that they know something is really terribly wrong with our country but they feel empowered that it can be fixed. Even if it takes a lot of work.
And we sometimes do not know the pot is boiling until we are dead frogs. But thankfully Scott Walker and people like him woke us up before we boiled. Confession-I used to be a homophobe. Unbelievable, a fundamentalist church cured me of that. It took being rocked by the blatant sexism and other hate there that drove me to another church where I met gay people who at that time (late 1990's) were still fighting an uphill battle against discrimination. Being a feminist at a fundamentalist church is like being black at a KKK meeting, or being gay at a fundie church, I guess.
But sometimes it is not until the hate is directed specifically at you do you wake up. So now we are awake, and a lot of damage done while we were sleeping. I hope nobody snoozes in 2012. I hope the the whole country gets Occupied with democracy.