One Democrat's Feelings Today

A lawyer in St. Louis by the name of Jim Daher posted this to a listserve we both belong to, and I thought it reflected a fair amount of what I'm feeling today:

So I went to bed last night feeling hopeful. Blunt and McCaskill were tied. Kerry was down in the electoral votes, but none of the heavy hitters had weighed in yet. I still had faith in the American people -- surely the majority saw reason and voted accordingly.

I woke up this morning, feeling like the Omega Man. Blunt not only won, but the news was playing a small clip of him saying that this is "a wonderful opportunity to effect real change in tort law." Not only did Blunt win, but the Republicans won the house, both in Missouri and nationally. Bush is going to win Ohio, and that means more ultra-conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Of the 11 states with gay marriage on the ballot, all 11 lost. The only reasonable decision I heard this morning was that California passed stem cell research. The entire country slid into the toilet overnight.

To add to the problems, because Bush ran such a divisive campaign, based on his self-perceived moral superiority and Christ complex, he will be not only unable, but completely unwilling, to heal the massive sociopolitical rift he has caused in the country. Contrary to his statements from the 2000 election that he "is a uniter, not a divider", he is actually the biggest "divider" this country has seen in my lifetime. Based on his behavior over the past 4 years, it's plain that Bush is planning on ignoring the 49.98% of the country that hates his guts and disagrees with everything he stands for, and the country will be even MORE divided over the next 4 years.

I expect the following results from all of this: A woman's right to choose will be a thing of the past. Corporate accountability nationally, and pretty much the entire field of personal injury law in Missouri, will be a thing of the past. The socioeconomic rift in this country will grow much deeper. The US will continue to become more isolated from the rest of the world. Within the next four years, there will be another major terrorist attack within the continential United States, but this time, instead of evoking world sympathy, most of the world will shrug and say, "well, what did they expect, carrying on like that." The Patriot Act II will tighten Big Brother's (Ashcroft's) squeeze on our fast-fading civil liberties. Historically, every democracy on this planet has lasted an average of 200 years. They have each, without exception, been replaced by a dictatorship. Check your watch and notice the Prince who's sitting on the throne.

Meanwhile, the 25 nations of Europe will continue to band together and strengthen their international power. Working as a whole, they have a larger population than the US, and more money than we do. They're a bigger market, and have more sway in international matters. They don't have as much military, but they don't want it or need it. They spend their money on crazy stuff like health care, instead. They will
collectively emerge as the next world superpower, and history will remember this moment as the turning point -- when the US started its backward, xenophobic slide into religious zealotry, unwilling to acknowledge the irony of becoming that which they profess to hate.

My disgust is beyond mere words. If you want a visual of my emotional response to these election outcomes, picture the guy at the end of the original Planet of the Apes, kneeling in the sand on the beach, looking up at the broken Statue of Liberty, screaming "You blew it up! You damned fools! You blew it all up!"

I'm not quite as pessimistic as Jim, but I know how he's feeling . . .