Something changed when I turned on the TV.

[Plaid Adder]

I have thought of one weird thing about last night.

I was happy and confident all day long, voting, getting ready for the victory party, and whatnot. Had the computer unplugged, no TV, no nothing.

Then I turned on ABC when it was time to start getting results.

For some reason as soon as I turned on the TV and saw that election night setup I started feeling sick to my stomach. It was more than just nerves. It was as if I couldn't get over my gut reaction, which was: nothing good ever comes out of that box. I just couldn't imagine a positive result being announced by the regular media.

A couple hours later I was thinking that, literally, if Bush won, I was going to throw up. So far, that hasn't happened; but it's early yet.

And then there was the moment when Bush invited everyone up to photograph him looking happy and confident. That must have been when they told him he was getting Ohio and Florida.

I still don't fucking believe it.

Last night, going to bed without knowing the results but without much hope, I said, "I should have expected this. All through history, nobody ever walks away from an empire. Everyone wants to be the one ruling the world. THey don't stop until someone else makes them stop. Why did I think we would be different?"

All empires fall. We will too one day. We will just about have to. A house divided against itself cannot stand, right? And we are what now?

Back in high school when we were taking American history we discussed at some poitn whether the civil war was avoidable. I remember my friend Jeanine pointing to one of the charts and saying, come on, look at the map. Look how everything is completely divided along regional lines. There's no way they weren't going to have a war.

In 2000 I blamed Gore for not thrashing Bush. In 2004 I don't blame Kerry. I think he did the best he could under the circumstances. We ahve been screwed by the media, by Rove, and by corruption at the top. But we have also been screwed by the plus-or-minus 50% of the country who would rather have this than something else.

What I wanted from this election was an end to all this that would *not* involve the rest of the world banding together against us for their own protection. That's what I fear in the years ahead. That, and the civil war--with or without actual weapons--that is surely coming.

The Plaid Adder

[LiberalVoice]

1. I'm not even going to try and write how I felt/feel.

You hit it On. The. Head.

[prodigal_green]

2. I have

thrown up several times already.

[RandomKoolzip]

3. Bush's extremity unwittingly birthed the movement which will be his

downfall. The activism I've seen in the last four years is only going to get more organized, more resolved, and angrier. You simply cannot keep screwing half of the country before that half of the country starts fighting back. I'm not seeing a happy, "bipartisan" end to this right now.

This vision the red sates have for America is actually the more radical, bizarre, unprecedented view of America. They think they're the ones carrying on "traditional" values, but it's actually an alien paradigm, a vision of radical change encompassing the merging of state and religion which had never existed previously. Under the guise of "how things used to be" they're trying to sell the rest of us this bizarre apparition, this hologram, this utterly insane view of this nation's ideals. And sadly, it's catching on.


However, I'm not seeing the blue states buying in. Whether the center can hold...I'm not religious, but I believe that a day of reckoning is on the horizon.

[regnaD kciN]

8. It will be too late by then...

Say your "movement" manages to wrest control of the White House and Congress in 2008.

There will already be a SCOTUS with a 7-2 or so extremist conservative agenda and a willingness to interpret the law in terms of its own agenda -- with most of the new members being young enough to ensure that it keeps that control for the next two or three decades.

There will be a government so deliberately run into debt that there will be no money available to do anything but pay off the interest payments -- ensuring that the new movement will not be able to enact any programs or reforms that acutally involve spending federal money, for years to come.

In short, we'll be dead in the water.

I don't want, at this time in my life, to start sounding like some of the more outspoken of the activists I hung around with during my youth in the late '60s, but I can't help but feel that "reform" (in the sense of winning election to the offices of the U.S. government post-Bush) will be doomed to failure, and that our only hope would be a revolution that would overthrow the current system altogether and start afresh. Note that I'm not suggesting manning the barricades or storming the nearest government offices, but I can't help, for the first time in thirty-odd years, wondering if the most potentially-successful alternative would be in blowing the whole thing up (figuratively, of course! ;-) ) and starting afresh, rather than trying to "reform the system."

:-(

[Village Idiot]

4. I have been saying ALL ALONG

that, to the GOP, this election is too important to leave the decision up to the voters.

[Ms.Victory]

5. I have a splitting

headache,that I can't seem to get rid of. I just feel weird. Like I am losing my mind. This SUCKS. :(

[progressivebydesign]

6. Speaking of ABC. David Gregory was the whore of the evening..

I don't watch Network news... I was reminded WHY last night when my husband flipped over to ABC. Did anyone see the exchange between David Gregory and Peter Jennings about Ohio? It went something like this:

David Gregory: 'The Kerry campaign is obviously asking themselves what happened, especially about the loss of Ohio...'
Peter Jennings: 'Uh, David, you've put us in an embarrassing postion. We have not called Ohio for Bush'
David Gregory: 'Well EVERYONE ELSE HAS!!'

Gregory then went on to talk about Kerry's loss of Ohio, and the election. I thought he was a Republican spokesman.. no lie.

[meg]

7. good post

Thank you

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. No TV, no computer for me either; I was a poll monitor.

And it was great. I was one of the Election Protection representatives at a polling place in a neighborhood where almost everyone was either an Asian immigrant or African-American. And it was so exciting to see all these people, many of them voting for the first time, and I was so proud to be part of this excerise in democracy. One African-American woman left the building smiling broadly, declaring "I've waited FOUR YEARS for this." I left after the polls closed, having heard only a little second-hand information about exit polls, and I was hopeful.

But then the results came in, and I realized that America, in the hands of Bush and Rove and their tame media, just screwed those people who voted with such enthusiasm today.

We are the rogue nation now.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

10. Comment from CNN last night when it turned in Bush's favor:

"The sense of depression at the White House has been replaced with one of ELATION!"

Because, after all, what we all want more than anything is for the Boy King to feel "elated."

Wait until the "election year" scrutiny is off of Bush and it's just "business as usual." Wait until the "National Sales Tax," when you walk into the supermarket and your $100 of groceries costs you $160, because by that point EVERYTHING YOU BUY will cost 160% of the sticker price. So you'll start moving items off the belt and asking the clerk to put them back on the shelf.

Wait until Bush pisses off the wrong psycho. If we learned ANYTHING from the Bin Laden "October Surprise" video, it's that this is all some big radical Islamist JOKE to him, a game of cat-and-mouse, and he is the cat with his paw on the tail of the mouse. We all know how those games end, right? The cat tires of the game and eats the frigging mouse.

That's the ONLY reason we haven't been hit again since 9/11. Bush hasn't "protected" DICK. Bin Laden is ENJOYING himself...he wants to make this game LAST...and IF this happens, he will have four more years to play it.

The worst part of all (and I posted this in a separate thread, so I won't repeat too much of it here) is all of this "let us work together as one to begin the healing process" CRAP that has been coming out since last night (Jon Bon Jovi was one of the people spouting this nonsense, according to CNN. They quoted him as saying it but didn't show a clip). Bush has an agenda. You GO with the agenda or you get kicked to the curb. That's the "process."

It will be interesting to see...IF Kerry concedes, IF this atrocity makes it into the home stretch...how a tired, angry, bitter, divided, uncertain, frightened nation will react to news footage of Bush smirking his way through his second inauguration.

I said this last night, I will say it again: SMIRKING? Folks, you haven't SEEN smirking. If this happens, Bush can sit behind the desk in the Oval Office for four more years and play with Saddam's gun, daydreaming of the next country that will feel the sting of his lash.

:grr: