3rd day of school, all systems normal. I am, at this very moment, procrastinating like hell on reading the cases for my constitutional rights class. Ahhhhh it's good to be back in school.

I've been thinking lately about the fact that I haven't so much as mentioned politics in my journal since the election. Since I never thought Kerry would win I'm not really sure I'd put it down to me being depressed about the election itself so much as just, generally, not very interested in talking about politics. I think I've been feeling a little bit stifled lately. I think politics are fascinating, I love political theory, I'm intensely interested in knowing how it all works (or doesn't work), I like the idea that everyone has the power to affect change through politics. I'm just not sure that's really true.

My California politics professor, who is not only brilliant but v. v. good looking as well, was talking today about how Californians tend to get interested in politics about every 12 years. In 2003 we recalled the governor, at which point over 60% of Californians reported that they believed that having a recall would solve all or most of California's problems. In 1990 there was a huge movement for legislative term limits culminating in the passage of prop 140. Now California has the toughest term limits in the nation; state assembly members can serve a maximum of six years and cannot ever run for the same office again, unlike most states where politicians can seek reelection after sitting out at least one term. At the same time, Californians voted to cut the legislative budget and the amount of legislative staff, essentially cutting the legislature's legs out from under them and greatly weakening their ability to get anything accomplished. 12 years before that there was a hugely popular "tax revolt" in which the people passed Proposition 13 which cut property taxes, a move which basically screwed the education system out of any chance of staying at the level it was at. Now, California school are ranked 46th in the nation.

I was in England when Schwarzenegger was elected. It was front page news there most days during the campaign, but people treated it like a joke. You know, those crazy Californians and their wacky political circus. I don't know what exactly went down here but man, I remember being over there thinking that the world was going to hell and my friends were probably going to be voting for a republican just for the fun of being able to elect the Terminator. Pretty fucking scary, man.

I don't think I really have a point in all this, except that there's a lot of stuff going on in the political world and most of it is bad but that doesn't mean I should just not think about it, because that's what I have been doing for these last few months. I've been going to Food Not Bombs, and passing out condoms, and trying to open this non-profit bookstore but I haven't been thinking about politics and current events much at all. So I don't know if this means you guys should start with the mass defriending because I'll be talking politics more or what but uh, feel free if you want to. I'm going to go read my textbook now. I'm really looking forward to this semester, I think it's going to be really challenging and really, really interesting.