Hey kids, I’m not sure I’m up to this idea of embracing the red states. I’m usually all for that kind of thing, but it gets difficult when they don’t want to be friendly. (Josh Marshall “explains my reluctance more eloquently”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_07.php#003956A than I could.) A case in point is this recent “explosion of fascist vitriol”:http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5652 masquerading as a “modest proposal” for mainstream America:

bq. As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization’s core decency and traditions…

bq. When they tire of showering conservative victims with ideological mud, liberals promote the only other subjects with which they feel conversationally comfortable: Obscenity and sexual perversion. It’s as if the genes of liberals have rendered them immune to all forms of filth.

bq. As a final insult, liberal lawyers and judges have become locusts of the Left, conspiring to destroy democracy itself by excreting statutes and courtroom tactics that fertilize electoral fraud and sprout fields of vandals who will cast undeserved and copious ballots on Election Day.

(Yes, you heard that right. Our crimes include talking about sex and encouraging everyone to vote.)

_Ugh._ That commentary would have sickened me if I hadn’t been bolstered by the simple beauty of “Sorry Everybody”:http://sorryeverybody.com/, a collection of heart-felt apologies to the rest of the world (i.e. victims of our foreign policy) and sweet replies from the world community.

OK, OK, I’ll write something about the election. I was just giving it a chance to… cool off or something.

The bad news: four more years of Bush. No link for that, because everyone knows it already. The good news: four more years of “Fafblog”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_10_31_fafblog_archive.html#109977682378623607, and that almost makes it worthwhile. OK, it doesn’t, but we can still laugh. Her. her. heh.

Oh, and in case you suddenly feel surrounded by hordes of brain-eating Jesus-talkin’ red-state zombies, please review the “map that puts the election results in perspective”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/. Scroll down to that last map and behold our “shredded country”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/cartcolorslarge.png, at the very least. It doesn’t change the basic fact that 51% of voters actually seemed to vote for Bush, but it tones down that feeling of “religious uprising” that we keep hearing about.

Alright, people, are any of y’all going to post with something helpful? I am feeling totally depressed. I’m trying not to. I console myself with “we lived through Reagan and the first Bush, we can live through this.” But I alternate with, “so how do you know when the water is starting to boil and it’s time to flee for your life?” I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors after all.

I consider the poor educational system in this country, our provincial attitudes towards the rest of the world — I mean, how many people in the U.S. can actually name and locate an African country or a baltic state on a map? Forget that, how many could even find France?

I listen to Democracy Now! and realize that most everyone else is watching Fox News or some derivation. I really do think that Rupert Murdoch is the anti-christ and I don’t even believe in that stuff. I do believe Michael Moore when he says that Americans are decent people — or at least like to think they are decent people. So what is it? Are we, as a country, just so poorly informed that we fall for all the doublespeak? Are we so anti-intellectual that half of us are willing to vote for an arrogant upper class man who pretends to be a good ol’ working class boy?

‘Course it wasn’t like the choices were terribly great — giant douche or turd sandwich? You South Park fans will get the reference. Guess I’ll just watch the Daily Show and South Park and try to keep my depression from becoming overwhelming.

From a post on “Slashdot”:http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=128064&cid=10700179 today:

_*Your friends are watching you*_

_All around the world, we’re watching you today. We love America, we want you to lead and inspire and show us what democracy and freedom and technology can do. But right now we’re feeling scared, confused, and angry about what your President has lead you to do over the past three years._

_Please, give us back the America we admire and believe in. Don’t turn yourselves into a religious state. Don’t turn your back on the UN and the other peoples of the world – in the end we are people first, American or French or Iraqi or Chinese second. Give us back the America that went to the moon and carried out the Berlin airlift and brought us the IT revolution. Give us back the America of Kennedy’s vision and MLK’s dream._

_And please, don’t let the world’s most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election’s Floridan antics._