I'm not sure what I expected out of today, but I guess I didn't expect to feel so bitter and angry and helpless and hurt. It didn't help any that there were crowds and crowds of smirking, laughing, chattering tourists at the metro station this morning - and I had forgotten to put money on my Smartrip card, so I had to wait in line for a good twenty or thirty minutes. And in that time the sense of delicious rebellion I had when I put on my blue underwear this morning completely evaporated. I had, also, a button: "Yes, I really do hate George Bush." An old, heavily made up woman with a coat and hat and sparkly red white and blue "W" pin saw my button, eyed it, and eyed me, and then laughed. Score yet another one for the Republicans.
Day by day I hear the voices rising
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score
They're like cattle on the trains, you know - to be charitable, it isn't their fault; they just don't know where to go or what to do, and how could they? They don't live here. But I'm not in much of a mood to be charitable. They don't live here: they don't belong here. They wouldn't move, when I needed to get off the train at Metro Center. Maybe they don't understand "excuse me." So I shoved them. But it didn't make me feel any better.
One by one I see the old ghosts rising
Stumblin' 'cross Big Muddy
Where the light gets dim
Day after day another Momma's crying
She's lost her precious child
To a war that has no end
I wanted to sing their folly to them - I wanted to shout - I wanted to climb up onto one of the inexplicable square stone things outside our office building (are they benches? sculpture?) and give a rousing impromptu speech - but there was no one around, my boots crunched in the snow and everything else was a resounding silence. A bus parked across the road. A yellow-vested man two blocks down. Emptiness. All the tourists were going - somewhere else. All the workers, save us, are at home. My city is overcrowded with strangers; my city is empty of everything that makes it home. Even the food cart vendor was the wrong vendor - a woman, not the usual man who's there - and she was on the wrong corner - and she had the wrong prices ($4 for a Coke and a muffin, instead of $2.50).
It's all wrong, and what is there to be done to make it right? I opened my email at work and had a personal message from Nancy Pelosi. Wasn't that nice of her? She tells me not to stop fighting. But, on reading the email I discover that fighting means "give the DCCC your money." Other users here at kos have talked of their frustration with this - and I felt that same anger and frustration welling up in me. Why should I "fight" if THEY won't fight for ME? Confirm the architect of our torture policy! Shrug your shoulders at social security! Allow questions about the legitimacy of the election to slip completely into oblivion - and now, you ask me for money? I have none! No money! Because you've failed to protect and defend our economy, I have no money! Because you've failed to protect and defend our reputation as a country of honorable intentions, at least, in our foreign policy, I have no pride left! Only anger. Anger and blue underwear.
And I didn't cry, I didn't cry as I wove through the crowds of aimless tourists standing like cattle in the metro station - I wanted to but I didn't cry. Maybe now I will, because today it feels that everything I worked so hard for from March to November, all of it was for nothing. Today it feels that nothing I ever do will ever make a difference again.
There is no justice left in this world. And yet there is nothing but for me to act. I will go and find it and bring it back, because I've got to, because someone's got to. Only where, where will I start? I feel so lost and lonely today, and I just don't know where to begin.
Did that voice inside you say
I've seen this all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again
It's like Deja Vu all over again