A stranger in a strange land

I grew up in Anaheim, Orange County, CA. I've always been a liberal. It never occurred to me that there was an alternative. Nothing else ever made sense. At one point, I realized that my entire extended family was Republican: my parents, my surviving grandparents, my aunts, uncles, and cousins; my sister, her husband and his entire family. A small epiphany of isolation, but one I never felt while growing up. I simply believed what I believed.

You might think that experience would have prepare me to live under Republican rule, but you would be wrong. For the last four years, I have watched the Bush administration lay waste to much that I hold dear, and now I have watched the voters of this country ratify those acts. I look at county voting maps and see a Red country with isolated pockets of Blue. I see hatred and intolerance triumphant. It is too much, but even after I close my eyes, it remains.