Mandate?!

[resonant]

I had an interesting exchange at the used bookstore.

Let me give you a sense of the place. It's the only remaining used bookstore in town, and it's not much of one. It's all pink and gold foil, row after row of romances. Back in the back is the sort of science fiction section you get when you sell and trade SF, but the whole store in every way communicates an utter indifference to the stuff: heavy on the crumbling, water-stained Golden Age paperbacks, every shelf entirely male and white except the occasional "dragons and flying horses for girls" title. There's a large but repetitive horror section (two solid bookcase of black spines) and a sadly neglected "classics" section in which Dunnett is right next to Dickens on an otherwise empty shelf.

So in other words, this bookstore deals in a commodity, not in ideas. It's not an island of imagination and curiosity, any more than the furniture store next door is.

Still, I'm so constituted that I must go to used bookstores, must, even if I repeatedly violate the laws of human nature by coming out emptyhanded.

As I set my trade-ins on the front desk this time, there was a sixty-ish customer talking to the clerk. The customer was saying, "And my family is military, too, but that's exactly why it makes me so angry --"

She saw me and dropped her voice, but I was close enough to hear her go on: "... when every day I turn on the TV and more soldiers are dying over there because of that -- that idiot!"

I laughed out loud, and both the women suddenly, visibly relaxed. The customer said, "You too?" And I said, Oh, yes, absolutely me too, and we all had a nice little anti-Bush bonding moment.

But I still couldn't forget that hush when I came in, the way they assumed I'd be against them.

George Bush won re-election by the narrowest of margins. I hate the way we in the reality-based community all go around acting as though we're vastly outnumbered, rather than merely outshouted.

Comments

[hesychasm]

Word. I get that for some people, talking about the way you voted is like talking about your salary -- a social no-no -- but I'm always pleasantly surprised to find that I can connect with an acquaintance or a stranger about politics. It renews my hopes for the next election.

[arallara.livejournal.com]

Dude, thank you. I get so sick of the idea that 51% of the people who could actually bring themselves to go vote is somehow now considered a "mandate." What utter bullshit.

[celandineb.livejournal.com]

I hear you. Locally I am, in fact, vastly outnumbered - but if I were living in any other place I've ever lived, I wouldn't be. Need to remember that.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'm in a red pocket of a blue state, but even here the population is very, very divided.

[ardent-muses.livejournal.com]

Locally, I'm sure I'm one of only a few who voted for Kerry, so I normally overhear people talking about how wonderful W is. However, it's always nice to find myself in a little pocket of sanity.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Excellent point--but it is scary, isn't it, the way people modulate their voices and stop talking when someone they don't know walks by? (I would expect a bookstore to be a hotbed of, um, subversive opinions--they always were when I was growing up in western VA, which is very conservative).

I almost have the opposite problem, which is that where I live I actually don't know a single soul personally who I know voted for Bush--they'd be the ones keeping it on the down-low, if they're around. There were a couple of signs around the neighborhood, but...It's deep blue around here, and I need to remember that my friends and family in other places are having a much creepier time of it.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

This is one of the few areas I tend to get entitled. As a military spouse, I feel I not only have the right to say whatever I like about whoever's currently in power, I have the obligation to do so as loudly as possible.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

It's amazing, the difference. Here, in Los Angeles, in a blue state in a major metropolis with several dozen enormous used bookstores, I more often get into trouble assuming I *am* free to bitch.

I come into every encounter assuming everyone's as furious and disgruntled as I am. Confident that everyone's on the same page as me, more, unable to imagine that they couldn't be. I say this in hushed tones. I imagine I've given them the benefit of the doubt.

TWO of my close friends, it turns out, voted for Bush this year. I can't look at them the same since, you know? And when I tell folks about it, they can't believe it either.

There's a culture of Bush-hatred, of revolution, here in LA. You can feel it in the air. It's...reassuring, somehow.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Chicago's like that too.

[starkittyn.livejournal.com]

*sigh, longs for used bookstore*

ahem, George Bush won re-election by the narrowest of margins. I hate the way we in the reality-based community all go around acting as though we're vastly outnumbered, rather than merely outshouted.

so true. :/

[liaison27.livejournal.com]

I live in Ohio . . ., which should be 'nough said. Only I'm in that little NE corner that tilts blue. I work at a University so it was the pro-Bushies who had to speak in hushed tones. It felt good to be able to be loud about being liberal/progressive/a Democrat, let me tell you.

I had a moment similar to Res' the week before the election in the local hardware store. Only the two female clerks and I made no effort to keep our voices down. It was obvious that several nearby men weren't like-minded, but they didn't say anything.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You're right, that hush is a bit eerie.

Oh, the country you live in! What has become of America, that land of myth for whole generations of Europeans??