Notes from a bleeding heart--and mouth (Assignment #3)

What seems worse—a Republican hatefest in your own backyard or dental surgery? Try having them both at once. One bitter, grinding pain intertwines with the other. The apex of my horror at both occurred Wednesday, Sept. 3—the surgery actually happened and Rudy Giuliani spoke. Doped up and nauseous, I sat and watched a sneering, hateful, bafflingly contradictory speech—former mayor of NYC mocks “urban” cities?—one that contained far more bile than any other I saw, but was overshadowed by Sarah Palin’s far more entertaining performance.

I haven’t felt terribly political this year, but somehow I got sucked into this election season’s inevitable descent away from issues into nonsense, probably because I was home recuperating from having my “gumline lifted” and some eroded bones in my mouth “smoothed out.” Very soothing euphemisms for violent procedures that had the dentist chair shaking and my heart pounding like a trapped little rodent in my chest while I imagined that jerking sensation was the periodontist ripping my teeth from my numbed mouth.

I’m not even strongly Democrat—I’ve only voted for their candidate twice in the four times I’ve been old enough to vote: enthusiastically for Bill Clinton’s first term, and listlessly for Kerry’s attempt. I abstained from voting for anyone for president during Clinton’s second run because I felt he’d gone back on too many of his campaign promises, Dole wasn’t a viable option, and Virginia didn’t allow write-in votes. And yes, I strove to help the Green Party get 5 percent and thus get taken seriously in the 2000 election. Minnesota went with Gore, so I don’t have to grapple with any what-ifs that I might have if I’d voted Nader in Florida.

But this year, the conservatives seem to be more craven and transparently soulless than usual, the Democrats are actually showing some idealism and some charisma—and this election’s still up in the air. I keep going over this point as obsessively as I run my tongue over the plaster covering my “lifted, smoothed” teeth and gums. Like my mouth, my faith in people to see stark differences between truth and lies, logic and emotional pandering, will never be the same.

But just as I start to lose myself in a gloomy mental downward spiral, memories of my August trip to the Minnesota State Fair emerge as a soothing reminder that, even in the middle of Middle America, the bad guys sometimes don’t prevail when they seem to be triumphing everywhere else. I saw the angry crop art—how adorable a term is that?—about picking up after the elephants crapping all over our home. I saw the enthusiastic crowds swirling around the DFL and Al Franken booths. And then I saw a Norm Coleman booth. Two tired old men manned it, and there seemed to be an invisible force field that kept a ten-foot space around it, with masses of people swirling along on all sides but seemingly avoiding it unconsciously.

I almost felt bad for them, for their morally bankrupt party that used to stand for so much that is good. What a typically wimpy liberal thought. That was before I saw the Giuliani speech, of course. Now I wish I could subject them all to torture—periodontal surgery would be a good start.