I decided to give myself a few hours to cool down before posting in my weblog about the election. However, I fear that my outrage will be lasting quite a while longer than 24 hours. 4 years longer to be exact.
I've certainly run the gamut of all possible emotions in the last 24 hours. What started as disbelief late last night turned into horror by this morning, eased into anger by midday, and ultimately returned to disbelief laced with fear by this evening. I am, quite frankly, stunned, speechless, and disheartened. I feel as though my faith in democracy and the American people has been seriously shaken and I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. What confuses and shocks me the most is the overwhelming support with which Bush reclenched the presidency early this morning. Did the Americans who voted for Bush yesterday spend the last 4 years in the United States like the rest of us? Our economy is in shambles, hundreds of thousands of Americans don't have health care, the schools most in need of funding and attention are simply shut down, our sons, daughters, sisters, brother, mothers, fathers, and friends are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan (along with countless civilians in those countries), Social Security will literally be GONE by 2047, and WE ARE NOT ANY SAFER NOW THAN WE WERE ON September 10th, 2001. And yet George W. Bush received 59,108,395 popular votes. What is wrong with this picture? Everything.
This administration has unabashedly insulted and disrespected the rest of the world with its isolationist policies and cowboy mentality. Bush is currently poised to appoint up to 3 conservative Supreme Court Justices that are salivating at the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade and fundamentally changing the way this great country runs. Bush's complete lack of respect for the environment has left and will continue to leave irreversible scars on our planet that we, our children, and our children's children will inherit, all in the name of making a quick buck. The scientific, social, and political progress we've made in the last 50 or more years is hanging in the balance now of a president whose platform deals not with the issues at hand but rather at defining and dividing a nation with conservative, religiously defined "values". Unfortunately, I don't share these so-called values and I'm only slightly comforted to know that 55,554,114 Americans don't either.
I'm obviously angry that George W. Bush is our president now for another 4 miserable years, but I'm actually more terrified than anything. We're witnessing a disturbing trend toward conservatism bordering religious fundamentalism in this country that threatens all of the social equalities our predecessors have worked toward. I'm scared that Bush's ill-conceived war plan has so alienated our old allies and so mobilized our sworn enemies that another attack on America, if not many, is inevitable. Most importantly, however, I'm terrified of living in a country that embodies a distinct spirit of intolerance, hatred, and xenophobia. I refuse to live in a country that marginalizes and discriminates others based on their incomes, skin color, gender, level of education, or sexual preference. How will I one day explain to my kids that some people in our country are allowed to get married and others just aren't? I can't. And I won't.
I tried to go to sleep last night around 2 am when the returns for Kerry truly started heading South (figuratively, obviously). Laying in bed, I unexpectedly started to cry. I cried for all of the reasons stated above, I cried out of anger and fear. I cried because I know that many of the wrongs the Bush administration has made in just its first tenure are undoable and because I cannot imagine it getting much worse than this. Through the tears, I also began flirting with the idea of becoming an ex-pat. Not Canada necessarily -- why not New Zealand? I have been itching to travel, right? *sigh* I digress. In reality, threatening to leave this country and disown it for all intensive purposes would be doing an enormous disservice to my own parents who left India and sacrificed everything simply to give my sister and I the incredible opportunities we have today. And it is because of these opportunities that I am grateful to this country, among other reasons. I admire the spirit of dissent and the criticism of government I have seen in Ann Arbor and amongst my peers these past few months. I am lucky to live in a city that is not afraid to have an open discourse surrounding these issues and I WILL continue to voice my own opposition to the current administration's dishonesty and disgraceful conduct for 4 more years to come.
My Dad said to me today that it is America's tenacity that makes it the greatest nation in the world and that we'll get through this together. I hope so. Right now, the next 4 years look extremely bleak to me and all I can do is hope that we have truly reached rock bottom -- in that case, things can only improve.
