Friday, November 05, 2004

The curtains are drawn and the candles have been burning for the past couple of nights in a quite home vigil. The only solace I can take is that we live in "Baja Canada" and not "Jesusland." I am so disgusted I don't even know where to begin.

The working people who voted for that man based on social conservatism will get what they deserve, more lost jobs, further economic marginalization and some day they will be the ones marching to the drumbeat of what we've been saying all along. I suspect a major scandal will break out somewhere in this term, once the Dems get their sea legs back.

The mainstream media has it all wrong. For the Dems to survive they need to go further to the left, not to the right. I think the idea of trying to pursuade the Jesus freaks and the dumb fucks who claimed they were "undecided" up until the end is the wrong way to go. Sure there are more stupid people than smart people in this country, but we need to take back the word liberal in this country and wear the moniker with pride.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has harbored thoughts of leaving this country, or fighting for California to secede, or a whole slew of other things. My wife says it best: My sense of patriotism died on 11/2/04. But I'm not ready to give up just yet. The pendulum will swing back in the other direction.


Anonymous said...

Nothing's more painful than truths that clash with deep-rooted beliefs. That's not only why I suspect that you, myself and millions of others in America and millions more worldwide were stunned/hurt/angered by Tueday's results, but also an explanation for those results. Yes, many who voted for Bush take easily to bigotry and greed, and probably a majority are just plain ignorant, ill-informed, or scared witless, if not bad people per se. But I'm sure that there's a third group that's of decisive size. These people are fairly intelligent, maybe even well-educated, but in the end they voted for Bush because they didn't want to accept one or more discomforting truths of the past 4 years. This was the voting block of cognitive dissonance.

I couldn't agree more with just about every sentiment and observation you express here, especially the imperative to "take back the word liberal . . . and wear the moniker with pride." I differ only slightly on the latter half of this statement:


I agree that the Jesus freaks are a lost cause. But like it or not, we need to win over more of the non-fundamentalist ignorant lot to win. How we do that is of course the subject of much spilled ink and blog posts to come. But for starters, I think one clear key is that we have to be better than the other side at framing/packaging issues. I'm also completely with you on the necessity for sharpening the distinctions between the parties rather than engaging in me-tooism and being defensive.

Anonymous said...

That was me @9:33.

Tom Bragan

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