The first place I went online to give myself some support after hearing the election results was to Josh Marhsall’s weblog, talkingpointsmemo.com From there, I linked over this statement about Federalism on Andrew Sullivan’s weblog, which I never read.
What we’re seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today’s world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don’t.
The more I read about Federalism, the more it appeals to me.
Or, even better, how about if all us liberal northeast states band together and form a Union of Federalist States as part of the United States. Then we can control our laws about gay marriage, abortion, separation of church and state, protecting personal privacy from the extremes of the Patriot Act etc. etc.
I don’t know enough about Federalism to understand how those expanded states rights interface with national responsibilities. I guess that I have my reading cut out for me.
I figure that the two avenues we have for working our way out of Bush’s imperial dictatorship is ferment civil war or ferment Federalism. Being a pacifist at heart, I opt for fermenting a New Federalist Movement.

..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.

The front page of the Perspectives section of my local newspaper today endorses Kerry with some very succinct prose about why to vote for Kerry as

the candidate who will take the country back to the center, where it should be
Exactly.
Even though my own politics tend more toward the left, I accept the fact that, in a democracy such as ours, the place to be on a national level (at least most of the time) is at the center. That’s where things that need to get done will get done with as much fairness and equality as possible.
I particularly like this part of the way the editorial presents Kerry’s strengths:
….We heartily endorse Sen. John Kerry for president. In almost every way, he’d be better at such a crucial job at such a critical time.
Mr. Kerry, we’re confident, would govern from reasonably close to the political center, as Mr. Clinton did. Mr. Kerry’s long career in public life, dating back to his days as a Navy officer and then an anti-war activist, reveals a pragmatic but principled man. It reveals an unusually sharp intellect, and a president capable of seeing not only the dangerous world that Mr. Bush sees, but the complicated world that Mr. Bush will never see.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry would be a president capable of learning from the mistakes that are inevitable in that job…..
In an email to family, b!X makes this prediction:
Since (1) young voters, who registered in high numbers, live on cell
fones which aren’t called by pollsters, and (2) new registrations of
any kind have a lagtime before showing up in public records pollsters
can use to call and so also aren’t being called by pollsters…
…the big story this election will be the media getting a story wrong
for the umpteenth time in the past four years. With the “get out the
vote” ground troops all across the country, the lead of Kerry over Bush
is going to be just enough to make all the worries about recounts, and
repeats of 2000, irrelevant.
(Like they say, the military always fights the previous war, the media
always plans to report the previous story.)
So much of the Bush campaigning and the press’ reporting has skewed [sic] things up badly. I can only hope that a moment of clear thinking will come upon the still undecided as they reach to pull one lever or the other.
Middle ground, people. This is OUR America, not just theirs.

The Red Sox were winning, and the Blood Moon, the Hunter’s Moon, was beginning, and I was at my daughter’s watching both, quietly slipping inside and out every fifteen minutes or, catching the best parts of each.
This Lunar Eclipse was the first I can remember watching alone, standing alone under the oaks, among the stillness, under a sky that cleared just in time for the show to begin. Everyone else on that dead-end street in western Massachusetts was inside rooting for the Red Sox. And so for those few crisp, clear moments, it was just me and the moon.
And so it began, preserved by the lens of my cheap little digital camera.

And just as it was ending, a magical red apple offered by an unseen hand reaching out of the black star-embellished sky, the Red Sox won.

What my camera couldn’t catch was the face of that dark, bloody moon. The woman in the moon, the the moon-shaped face on the statue of Acua’ba that watches from the top shelf of my bookcase. Acua’ba, who seeds the seas and guides the night; who guides the seas and seeds the night.

I was in for the win, but then I went back outside to finish what the moon had begun.
Three times widdershins around the house, sending dark into dark, weaving points of cool starlight through the trickles of warm homeglow, spinning the emerging moonspurs into bright wishes, hopes, healing.
Banish Bush, I chant. Heal the wounds. Protect the sons. Moon Mother. Keep all of our sons safe and all of our daughters strong.

Begin the change. Open the hearts.
Banish the Bush.
ADDENDUM: I wrote this twenty or so years ago. I still feel the same way, especially as I wait for elections to be over.
The flocks are forming to the north,
flying in the face
of a hungry hunter