taking a deep breath

That thing with feathers is now bleeding itself.

I'm trying to stop crying. I'm trying to believe what Kos wrote for the Guardian UK: that this is the beginning of a new left machine. I'm trying to sort out all the information about spoilage: voter registrations in the trash in New Mexico, 250K provisional ballots in Ohio. But what's also clear: the kids with cell phones didn't show. And my demographic, 30-44, voted less than last year. We opened it up for the 4 million evangelicals (organized illegally!) who followed Bush's poisonous gay marriage amendments.

I thought I was writing a blog pleading with John Kerry not to concede, to stand up for the people who waited till midnight to mark paper ballots in Ohio. But we have two new Senators who want to ban abortions completely and the incipient incineration of Fallujah. I'm having trouble summoning the activist in me, fighting off the shadow that hurts. And now I've run out of time to articulate further what today feels like and what I think it should mean to us.

How do we sort this out? How do we hold something in our hearts? Should we think of emigrating? I hope someone comments today: the only way to emerge from this darkness is side by side with other secular heathens. Can we do it? Howard Dean, can we still take our country back?

Comments

[Carl Nyberg]

Blame problems not people.

If young people didn't vote, why not?

Is it b/c it's easier to vote if you've done it before?

Is it b/c large chunks of the middle-class and above have an existence bifurcated by education and origin?

This election should have been a blow-out for the challenger. Bush has no successes to trumpet. But he won. How did Bush make his case to millions of people? How did Kerry fail?

Scapegoating young people doesn't get the Democratic coalition anything. Do you think these people can be harangued into voting?

[Ericka]

The wind is out of my sails. It's like the civil war. It is a civil war. It's like Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. Abortion, gay rights, all our rights. Empire building. I know we have to find the spirit to keep moving on, and not just (as my friend Tilly says, "putting one foot in front of another") but for now, for this moment, I'm just registering the immensity of this loss. Watching those swaths of red states last night was almost unbearable. Looking at the neo-Hitlerian four finger salute of the repubs ... oh my. I don't think *I* emigrate -- my roots are deeply sunk. But of course I wonder.

[Eddie]

My sails are full. Kerry concedes again, Daschle lost, 3 Justices for Bush to choose, and a Iran to conquer next before N. Korea. The path of the U.S. is clear for victory, All the bleeding hearts are out of the way. My real fear now is the 2008 election is already being campaigned by Hillary.

[Chris]

I was so heartened to see so many comments: it's good to feel we're all trying to puzzle this out together. Ericka, your mention of Margaret Atwood echoes thoughts I've had for months; I keep thinking about the end where they describe *how* it happned. Carl, your point is extremely well taken -- especially since as it turns out, the youth vote was a lot stronger than I thought. Ed, your clarity and full support of GWB's agenda makes you quite a terrifying trope for what the rest of us are organizing to oppose. (Eddie's my baby brother, for those who don't know.)

As you'll see from my next post, I'm trying to sink in and make this about struggle instead of expatriation. But I'm re-thinking some current plans, including Ph.D. school, in favor of trying to make myself useful....

[Dave]

I remember riding in a taxi as the U.S. was going into Iraq. The driver, a devout Muslim Arab who supported the idea of liberating Iraq, told me in sweeping terms that once we started with Iraq, we were then going to have to go all the way and make a clean sweep throughout the Middle East. I feel I understand Eddie's enthusiasm for going the distance on this one.

We did of course go into Iraq without a clear plan for follow through, and we're already overextended financially being there, and we already don't seem to have enough military personnel. Maybe we'll learn as we go, find the resources, and push all the way. Maybe we'll succeed completely, in bringing Western democracy to a region that needs it, and gain a safer world long term as a result.

The image of women in berkas voting in Afghanistan shows a process that is hopeful, contradictory at first, and may be worth the investment.

The driver also said, of course, that he felt it's in God's hands, that God would determine the outcome. And W feels he has a mandate from the people, and from God, to pursue his policy there.

We are pursuing a policy of democracy in Iraq, a country where we actually don't want the majority to prevail, because that would tend towards a government that is much like the one in Iran now.

As we cherish our freedom, may we also proceed wisely.

[Dianne]

It's not the Bush win that really gets me about this election. Sure, I'm not happy to live in a country that freely re-elected a leader who, in one year, has already killed at least 1/3 as many Iraqi civilians as Saddam Hussein did in his entire tenure as "president" of that country, but I rather expected that result. I could even live with knowning that 11 states have enshrined prejudice in their state consitutions in the form of anti-marriage amendments, although I'm going to avoid those states as much as possible in the future. No, the thing that makes me wonder if there's any hope for the US is the referendum in Alabama which proposed officially repealing the laws segregating Alabama's schools. It failed.