Four More Years

"I'm going to be involved with heavy drug use for the next four years" was the quote that escaped the lips of one of my housemates as she closed the door behind her and headed to work earlier this morning. It was a late night and a brutal morning, with her barging into my room sometime around 5am to tell me that Andy Card was doing his best Hitler impression while saying to the world, "Resistance is futile! Bush is The Man!" all while the votes were still being counted. And, as it turns out, Card was no cad. He got it spot on and at one o' clock today Kerry is going to make his concession and then the real party begins for the other half of this country. Not here though, not in the Northeast. I live amongst, indeed squarely within, one Big Block of Blue. This place is like a Goddamn tomb right now. Or else a funeral parlor. People are walking around alternately stunned and surly.No one really knows what to do. This is the kind of event that just might push a pacifist to seek out the nearest gun show. There will be protests and marches and all sorts of circus behavior in various cities where the choir is syncopated anyway. Things will come to a hush then for a bit and hopefully we will all be able to sit down and come to terms with whatever common ground is left. Kerry of course is doing the thing that all, ALL his critics said he was incapable of: acting selflessly. In the act of concession he is the first to exhibit hope for a new chapter where the parties are not so bitterly divided. He is a gentleman, after all. Some of us liked him from the beginning for who he was: a statesman, a lifelong public servant, an internationalist, an optimist. Some of us just liked that he wasn't Bush. It is odd to be writing a sort of eulogy for a campaign that I thought really had a chance. But it was not meant to be. In the final analysis, we must move forward.
There are powerful, dangerous forces at play in this country. There is a revolution taking place that threatens to push the pendulum far past moral atonement and into the realm of intolerance. But that's part of the game, isn't it. The uppity New Englanders have been dealt a mortal blow by the Heartland. "Your values are not our values", they say. "Your godlessness is no longer acceptable." And we will deal with it I guess because we have no choice. Even though most of us here in Hell aren't godless at all. Since when do we have to choose between faith and intellectualism? Morality and Progress? Who sold us THAT shitty bill of goods? Well, the answer lies somewhere in the strategy that staged a moderately religious man in Bush at the helm of a party base that is increasingly anything but moderate. Maybe George Bush will find his more even bearings and lead us back to the center. Then again, maybe we are in for some serious change. I view it all as wide open at this point. It's a new day, my fellow Americans. But who am I kidding? I'm feeling depressed and defeated. I'm feeling like I live in a totally different world than the not-so-silent majority. But whatever does happen, at home or abroad, it cannot be blamed on an accident of electoral process. No, this time the American people unquestionably put forward Their Guy. We have bought responsibility now. We the People own outright the fruits of the next four years, for good or ill.