mourning in america

I’ve been in a great mood thus far today. The election is over and maybe there will again be something substantively interesting for this Curmudgeon to blog over. It has been a hard couple of weeks for the de facto disenfranchised because all anybody has wanted to talk about is the election.

For the record, I was way off on my election prediction: I expected a Shrub victory at quite a bit larger of a margin than what he achieved. I based my prediction on the exploitation of fear by the GOP and apparently that was broadly the case, though it would appear that the fear of homosexuality was at least as great as that of the terrorists.

Nope. I didn’t see that coming.

But as the hours go by and my the energy fades from my personal jubilation at the nation finally choosing its preppy potentate of choice, I do sense that mourning is probably in order. As I survey the message boards, I detect unmasked triumphal ecstasy on the part of the 43 apologists and extreme bellicosity on the part of the Kerry crowd. These feelings are unlikely to be buried by today’s calls for healing.

I did see one news story that directly stated the obvious truth: this election was fantastic for incumbents. Very few of the incumbents were turned out though of course there was the notable firing of Daschle. I would like to think that the re-election of incumbents was notably high for good and honorable reasons. It would be comforting to believe that these politicians are doing a great job and that the voters were confident in casting their votes, but of course that is not at all what happened.

The problem is there are no real choices in elections for most Americans. We have for the most part neatly divided into two camps, and Cowboys do not vote for Indians. The actual number of swing voters is small and shrinking. So we repeat this cycle over and over, casting our vote for our party man and ensuring that the same old politicians get returned to office year after year.

Instead of calling it Election Day, they should call it Ground Hog Day.

Third party voting appears to have been virtually non-existent this election and that saddens me far more than returning the Shrub who would be King to office. While I firmly believe that the damage that will be done over the next four years may well be permanent and unrepairable, it would nice to have a little hope that people might actually wake up to voting for change rather than the lesser evil.

If you want to really get down about things, realize that a lot of the voters subjectively were voting for change.

But a gadfly such as myself needs much to complain about and I have been assured by this election of a cornucopia of good material-or at least that might be my attitude if I didn’t actually care about America. Rather, what begins today for me is a renewed quest to make a difference in our society and my vehicle for this endeavor is this blog for now.

And in regards to the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon, I would ask for your prayers. For those of you who castigate me as a Liberal, I would ask that you pray for my greater wisdom in expressing my steadfast confidence in our traditional values of personal freedom. For those of you who condemn my imputed Conservatism, I would ask that you pray for a strengthening of my compassion so that I might more effectively advocate for those in our society that are the most needy. And lastly, for those of you who understand that I do not fit into these political moulds and find some form of common cause with me, please pray that my readership can grow and that together, we can have some small part in changing America for the better.

Please hurry. Tempus fugit.