..and depressed. That’s what I am over this election. The country was split just about half and half and Bush interprets that as a mandate to stay the course. A MANDATE!!! Yeah, from half of the country. What about us in the other half? Will he change his course and represent (as he should if he wants us to consider him our president as well as theirs) OUR priorities, OUR moral and ethical standards? We all know the answer to that.
some emails I got say it all for me:
from a local poet:
Four more years of a bent Supreme Court
Four more years of our youth being slaughtered
Four more years of the US being the bully of the planet
Four more years of ignoring the death camps in Sudan
Four more years of being ashamed of my country
from a Londoner:
Dear Fellow Bloggers,

I sat up as late as I could following the progress of the US elections, fell
asleep and then woke up to a news soundbites of the GOP cheering for
“Florida calls for Bush”, chants of “4 more years!! 4 more years!!” and then
was bombarded throughout the day–on BBC Radio 4, the bastion of balanced
(though liberal-leaning) thought, no less–with “The White House declares
Bush the clear winner”.
And now, it’s just been announced that John Kerry has just called Bush to
concede defeat.
Right now, as I commented in response to a blog entry by a Canadian friend,
this is what I (and many other non-Americans who have been unable to vote
but were praying and hoping so hard) feel:
“4 more years of insanity is exactly what it’s going to be if some miracle
doesn’t happen in the next day or so.
For the last few years, The Rest of the World consciously separated the
American people from the U.S. administration, believing that Bush stole the
2000 election.
Now that Bush is winning the popular vote, I think that even that effort to
make a distinction between people and government will be wiped out because
this time, the majority voted for Bush in the full knowledge of what he is
and what he did.
I don’t really know what to make of Americans anymore. It used to be that
America largely had its heart in the right place but now, it doesn’t and
that’s frightening, seeing as it’s the teenager nation who has shown that it
is fully capable of lording it over the world with superior firepower and
that arrogant teenaged sense of self-righteousness.”
Okay, the pundits amongst you will point out that I’m generalising again but
to someone like me whose beliefs and values are the anti-thesis to
everything championed by the Bush administration (who are an affront to
everything I hold dear):
It’s frightening to even contemplate the thought of the sheer scale and type
of mess the Bush administration is going to leave America and the world in
by the time they leave office in 4 years. Perhaps a Kerry-Edwards
administration would not change things that much but at least it would have
brought some reason and sanity back, as I see it.
The lesser of two evils is still the lesser of two evils.
One thing’s for sure: the America I once knew, admired and respected looks
like it’s heading the way of the Titanic. And since the USA wields so much
influence over world events, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the
world will feel the effects of this for a long time to come.
Once upon a time, America led by example. Today…
Anyway, I’d just like to say “Thank you” to all of you for doing your bit to
try to vote Bush out of office and especially to those of you who went one
further and volunteered to work on the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
I guess we won’t be having those wild street parties in Oxford tonight but
we hope that you will all continue to fight the good fight and to one day
restore the America the rest of us knew and loved. And I hope that one day
the painful divisions in your country will be healed.