Hail to the Chief

[rain_gryphon]

I'll confess myself surprised that Bush won again. I'd expected it to be close, but a Kerry victory in the end. In a way I'm disappointed (I voted for Kerry, primarily from disgust at Bush's courting of the Evangelicals and that whole Marriage Amendment thing) and in a way I'm relieved. I suspect I'd have felt the same mixed emotions had Kerry won. It's not an election that I would have been able to feel ecstatic about, either way.

I've been less than enchanted with Bush this past year. He seems to have run out of ambition after conquering Iraq. Oliver Otter and a couple others have tried to convince me that this is a temporary thing, and that after the elections are over he'll turn his attention to Iran. I've got my doubts. I'm hoping that they're right and I'm wrong, though.

Time will tell.

Comments

[chahala.livejournal.com]

Bush has fucked up so badly over the last four years that there 'isn't' any excuse that can cover it. Basicly bush has failed in any measureable sense. Lost jobs... massive debt, (If shared equally every man woman and child in the US owes 26k in national dept.) The rapping of the environment with things like the 'healthy forest act' to the compleat gutting of the scientific advisory panels and funding for research.

Another four years will just be more of the same... while adding another 2 to 4 trillion in dept while he is at it. It will also probable mean a shift in the courts as he stuffs in more and more extreamly right-wing judges. So the effect of bush will last for the next 30 years even if people wise up by 2008.

Considering that people like Oliver Otter still support that monster in office I don't see that happening. As for being friends with someone like that... I have given up on it. When they don't care enough about their fellow man to not vote for the next Hitler... then they don't deserver your friendship.

Chahala

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I think that's really sad if you pick your friends based on politics.

[chahala.livejournal.com]

Sad... but something that I think should be done by more democrats. I don't think I can even count the number of times I have been 'snubbed' by republicans because I wasn't 'one' of them.

So you know what? I am not going to be a nice guy anymore. Two can play that game and sense that is the level that the republicans want to play at I'm willing to give it to them.

If I find out that anyone working for me is a republican... I will find a reason to fire them... If I find a friend that is a republican and bush supporter... I will not be there friend. I will not give them insite... interesting stories... or let them be part of my life.

Basicly any republican, no mater what their reasons, are voting to strip me personally of my rights as a US citizen. More so then any other political party has ever dreamed of. If they are republican then they are against choice for women, homophobic bigots, and think athiests should be taken out and shot.

This goes on the theory that all of those things listed should be repugnent to any thoughtful intelligent person... and if they vote for someone with those kinds of ideas... then it is a vote for those things.

By now no bush voter shouldn't know what is going on. So they aprove of all of it. Hense, I can freely hate them with a passion and care for 'them' as much as they seem to care for me.

Chahala

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Again, it's really sad to see someone so consumed with hatred.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

Personally I'm just relieved the mess is over. Kerry did a very noble thing today. If only Gore had done so four years ago, we'd not be in this mess of hatred today.

Let the healing begin.

[rabbitboy.livejournal.com]

Look around though. Look at what Chahala said above.

There isn't any healing going on. If anything, the hatred of folks on the left has become an even deeper divide. It goes beyond being sad to see, and moves right into the field of being frightening.

And I'm not saying that as some kind of metaphor, I mean it's literally frightening. I think Bush is going to get shot at by someone from our own country. Or even worse, the violence shown against political objects like the Bush/Cheney campaign offices and their signs and whatever, is going to spill over into the next four years and it's vengeance is going to turn against anyone who can be classified as a Bush supporter. Churches being burned, houses being vandalized, people getting lynched. Domestic terrorism, if you really want to boil it down.

In a way, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wish Kerry had won. I wish Bush had won the majority of the popular vote, but Kerry had taken it based on the electoral college. It wouldn't have mended any fences or formed any bridges, but at least this fiery rage and embittered cynicism we're seeing now wouldn't exist. I... honestly can't say that it'd be this way if Kerry had won, though I guess I can't speak for everyone. I think I'd rather have seen Kerry win then watch my friends turn into this... army of bitterness. I would have been angry, sure. But I'd like to hope that I could have tempered that kind of rage with the realization that the friends I have are far more significant in our day to day lives than any political official, and that this is a game of words and ideas we play, and in that event, my side just didn't play the game good enough.

Maybe it's just temporary. In a week everyone will have calmed down and things will get back to normal. Unfortunately it looks like "normal" will end up being the same thing that it was after 2000. An angry, bitter, partisan divide between people that... when you sweep the rhetoric and the ideology aside, aren't nearly as divided as we seem to think.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

I don't personally read a lot into the mood of people the day after they lost an election. Most of the Kerry supporters (most of whom weren't actually Kerry supporters, but merely Bush opponents) will calm down in a little while, and that'll be the end of it. There will be an angry, vocal fringe, of course, but there always was anyway. And that fringe will continue to isolate themselves, and alienate moderates, and the Democrats will lose worse and worse, until they police their own a little better, and censure the fringe out of rational discourse. That a self-admitted Communist (yes, he has said outright that he's a Trotskyite) like Michael Moore had a prominent speaking engagement at the Democratic convention spoke worlds to the moderate Republicans (and many moderate Democrats), and what it said didn't help the Democrats to gain any votes.

I think there will be healing, after a lot of scared people get over the shock of realizing that their views, which they thought were in the majority, really are in the minority. I mean, what else is left, but acceptance and healing? Bush did win the popular vote, with an outright majority (which not only Gore, but Clinton, twice, failed to do), so any claim that he's not legitimate is gone.

And while I hope it doesn't turn to violence, it'd really be the end of the left. I remember when Reagan was president, how he had to reach out because the majority of the population were Democrats. Now the Republicans are in the majority. And don't forget which party has more NRA members; it's not that they're the ones who own guns, but that they're the folks who go out and practice with them. Hollywood aside, they're not self-explanatory, and you do need to practice to use one effectively. I'd be more worried about domestic terrorism if Bush had lost. Compare the number of attempts on Clinton's life to Bush's; even the ones that the Secret Service couldn't manage to keep quiet. Compare the number of abortion clinic attacks to the number of attacks on right-to-life demonstrators (have there been any at all?). Both show that anger against leftist wins has been far more savage than what we have today. Bush winning was the best hope for healing.