Not Gonna Happen

The other day, in his acceptance speech, President Bush told the electorate that he needed the support of those who had voted for Kerry, that he was going to work hard to earn it.

Yeah, right. Sorry, Mr. Bush, but if you insist on "staying the course" there is NOTHING you can do to earn my support.

I find myself curiously out of step with the rest of the country, though I live in the Midwest and consider myself a Midwesterner. Of course, I live in Illinois, a state that gave its electoral votes to John Kerry--a state whose Republican party is sadly unorganized and lacking in genuine leadership.

I seem to sympathize more with the "cultural elite" of the northeastern states, who can't believe that the rest of the country could be so dense. What were you thinking, America? That this crazy zealot of a president is going to bring sanity and order to the world? That "moral issues" are somehow more pertinent to society than true human decency?

I believe that morality is all about being good to your fellow man, not about what the Bible says is wrong (how is taking away basic liberties from a segment of the population moral?). I believe that the other countries of the world have EVERY right to think of us as horrible people and a nation of total idiots. I believe we've gone so far backward in our thinking that Enlightenment might as well never have happened and the Constitution could just be considered another outdated document. I believe that we've become more like our enemy than we are like the other civilized nations on our planet. I believe that we're a nation of hypocrites--or we're just blindly closing our eyes to the truth.

Wake up, America. Health care is not going to improve in the next four years. The deficit is not going down. The environment isn't going to get any better. The economy will continue to suck. Iraq is headed for a civil war, and things just keep getting worse over there. Remember Abu Ghraib? That was Americans torturing other people.

I worry about this country. I worry about the people who are so afraid that they'd rather ban gay marriage than open their minds to the possibility that tolerance is a better virtue than hate. I worry that over half this country thinks it's a good idea to bomb another one for no good reason. I worry that other countries will see us at our worst--insular, frightened, backward, fanatic, ignorant. I worry that emotion will win out over reason, I worry that it will take a disaster to make the Bush administration realize that it's not just the rich people in this country who need help.

Under Bush we are still a great nation, but we are no longer good. And our kids will pay for our mistakes.