Election 2004 in Quotes
Nov. 9th, 2004 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanWomen, hold tight to your uteri, men, don't forget to pack that shaving kit for the midnight train to Canada, homosexuals, pretty much get the fuck out of anywhere that sells Dodge, children, better start selling it while they still want to buy it if you hope to afford health care, because W's here to stay for another four years of bigotry, senseless war, record job loss, and erosion of your civil rights and the health you need to fight for them.
[breathes deeply] That was reactionary, yet cleansing. There's a bit more of that here, but there's also strategy, and advice, and reasons to believe there's no hole Dubya can dig in four years that we can't, if we work at it, dig ourselves out of. The completist in me has scoured and read as much of LiveJournal and other sites as I've within my scope. You've been funny, you've been poignant, you've been grave, but thank whatever powers that be because beyond any of that, you haven't been silent. Don't let that change.
Zingers:
"God will have a legitimate role in politics when he starts paying his fucking taxes. NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUTTAXATION, yo."
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nostalgia_lj
"I for one welcome the return of our tyrannical neoconservative overlords and pray they lead us to righteous victory against gays, the french, stem cell research, abortion and the environment. Amen."
-mock2
"[Bush] won the election, according to the exit polls, because the public looked long and hard at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 1,122 dead and 8,039 injured american soldiers, over 16,352 dead iraqi civilians, a $413 billion budget deficit, a $489.4 billion trade deficit, and 821,000 jobs lost.
And then they looked at two men walking down the aisle in San Fransisco.
And they decided they'd rather have the former than risk the latter."
-ktl
"Dear Red America,
As you lower the flag draped coffin of your son into a hole in the ground, I'm sure it will bring you great comfort to know that his last thoughts as he lay bleeding to death thousands of miles from home was probably, 'At least those gays can't get married.'
No doubt the solid grip of your assault rifle will be wonderful company as you linger painfully from an illness that could have been cured with early intervention had you not lost your health insurance.
When you stare at your eviction notice, wondering where and how you and your family will live on your three minimum wage job salaries, you can stand strong knowing that, while little Suzie may not have dinner tomorrow, at least she'll never have safe, legal access to an abortion.
And as the world around you devolves into violence and chaos, as you become less and less safe every passing moment, as your civil liberties are stripped away even as your security dwindles you be sure to shout it loud and proud that God was, in fact, on your side."
-just_eunice
"And yeah. You would also think it was a hint when almost the entire minority population votes for one of the candidates. If were weren't us, we'd invade us in an attempt to spread democracy and free us from our dictator."
-dreamscribe
And the Brits did it well here.
Frustration:
"You know, Mary says a lot that America isn't a place, it's a set of ideals. I dig where she's coming from, but to me, America has always been We the People -- not the concept thereof, but an actual whole bunch of people. And I don't like us very much anymore; I've always said, blah blah, I do love my country, it's just that I don't like *whatever.* But I look at 52% of the people in the country -- 60-odd percent in my state -- and I can't have anything but spite and contempt for their brutality and stupidity, and I just wonder, if I hate *the majority* of the people, by what rights anymore do I say I love the country? The principles, the ideals? Well, I suppose that means I love the *dead* people who came up with them, but who cares?
Now everyone's on about healing and learning to work together, and I'm either so far past that or not there yet. I'm sick of the whole idea of democracy; what the fuck do the *people* know? We pander endlessly to them, sell them the man-of-the-people bullshit, convince them at a walk that a man whose father was for Christ's sake *the President* is a regular guy just like them, and we wave the flag and talk about morals and at the end of the day we convince them to collaborate in their own oppression, to run themselves into decades of debt, to collapse Social Security, to defund their schools and drive up the cost of their health care, to bring back the 60-hour work week with no overtime and make them feel fortunate to have a job at all, to pay money we do not have in order to kill 100,000 men, women, and children who only want their freedom *from us,* and to help the ruling class subvert their Constitutional protections. Clearly if the people knew jack shit about government, they'd be doing a better job of it already."
-bettyp
"It simply boggles the mind: We've already had four years of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and still much of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith, still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant.
Here's the thing: For tens of millions of us, it is simply unconscionable that we could possibly be led for another four years by a small and spoiled little man who has very little real idea what he's doing and even less of how the hell he got there. It would be funny, in a Adam Sandler, toilet-humored sort of way, were it not so poisonous and depressing. And yet it looks like we're stuck with it, like a shard of glass buried deep in the eye.
And the rest of the world? Well, it can only watch us and shake its collective head and wonder just what the hell is wrong with us, why so many millions of us would even consider re-electing the world's most inept and war-hungry and insanely inarticulate man to four more years of unchecked power, why our much-hyped much-coveted supposedly ultra-superior democratic system is so very deeply blotchy and knotty and spoiled."
- Mark Morford for the San Francisco Gate
"So, to all of you who didn't realize or care enough that there was a lot more at stake than just who's going to be making those boring speeches that interrupt your stupid sports or sitcom reruns or whatever the fuck it is you watch on your rat-tweaking Skinner box of a television:
Fuck you. Fuck you in your stupid ass.
If my handsome, talented, funny, brilliant and utterly and distressingly honorable friend with the beautiful, full-of-grace, more-deserving-than-me wife gets sent back to Afghanistan for another year because Bush is STILL in the White House . . . if those baby-lovin', woman hatin' Republicans claim my uterus to breed more soldiers for their asinine wars, it would only serve you right if I personally come to your house and beat your non-voting ass until you are choking on your own blood and vomit. Then I should piss on you and set your fucking house on fire.
But I won't have to do that. It's likely you'll feel like a complete heel after four more years of this shit, without me having to do a thing. It's possible you'll get drafted, and if not you, someone you know. I hope you care about them. I hope you care about them a LOT. I hope you cry into your pillow every goddamn night.
It's possible that while you aren't looking, they'll pass a wonderful, fun law that outlaws one kind of abortion, and then pass another that is even worse. It's possible that courts will begin to support those misguided and reprehensible doctors and pharmacists that deny birth control to people based on their own faulty moral compass. It's possible that you or your girlfriend might end up knocked up and desperate, and unable to do anything about it except cross your fingers and hope. And when the baby you didn't want is in school, guess what? It will not get taught how not to get itself or anyone else pregnant. No. It'll be taught that God created the world in seven days. I hope you really love the smell of dirty diapers, because with one slip, you could be in baby shit up to your nose for the rest of your life.
It's possible that, thanks to medieval legislation, the few good years the gay rights movement has had could be renduced to a single bright candleflame against the black backdrop of ignorance, bigotry, and fear. Anti-sodomy laws for all, including you! I hope you don't get much head now, and I hope you don't like assfucking, because if it isn't illegal where you live where you are now (and you really should know), it might be, soon!
And that kid you couldn't prevent and couldn't abort? Could be gay. Or you could have a gay relative, a gay friend, right now. How would you justify your inaction then? Or, most poetically, you could fall in love with someone of your own sex. Are you going to be the one to explain to your heartbroken son why he can't marry his lover? Are you going to tell your coworker that the reason his partner of 20 years can't legally inheirit without it being contested to Hell and back is that you, and all your kind, couldn't be bothered to switch off Spongebob, crawl out from whatever benighted rock you live under, and push a fucking button, fill in a circle, or draw a little line? Are you going to tell your lover that if you had known, if you had only known that it would make a difference? No. You'll keep quiet. Just like you did yesterday.
Fuck you.
I hope you fall in love with someone of your same sex, want to get married, can't, and then they get drafted and shot, and you don't hear about it for a month, and you hear about it on your fucking birthday or Christmas or something. And you are – somehow – pregnant and unable to get an abortion. Or health care."
-naahman99
"He didn't win because people believe in fiscal conservatism or smaller government. Because he doesn't. He's proved that. What he believes in is more guns, less gays and curtailing a woman's right to choose what she can do with her own body. And people in this country were willing to vote against their own needs and self-interest to make sure that, by god, two queers weren't going to get married in their country."
-marythefan
"Do you know the crippling fear that comes over you when you suddenly realize the system is not only built to make life your difficult (which it is for almost everyone) but built to reject you? Do you know what it's like to live in the supposedly "most advanced" country on the planet and realize that some white Protestant fucking COWBOY is deciding whether or not you have the right to visit your partner in the hospital when they're sick? I could list a hundred things that anti-gay partnerships/marriage laws deny gay couples. Ask me and I'll do it.
...That's what the Bush supporters voted for tonight. Yes, there are other issues. But we're talking about the basic human rights of equality here in our own fucking country. If you're not going to start there, where the hell do you start?"
-beizy
"I am not safe. I never feel safe. My in-laws live in a small town in Ohio, and that town has received more federal funding, per capita, for terrorism preparedness than New York City has. I take subways and buses every day. I work in a skyscraper across the street from a "target." I have emergency supplies and a spare pair of sneakers in my desk, in case somethng happens while I'm at work. Do you? How many times a month do you worry that your subway is going to blow up? When you hear sirens on the street, do you run to the window to make sure everything is okay? When you hear an airplane, do you flinch? Do you dread beautiful, blue-skied September days? I don't know a single New Yorker who doesn't spend the month of September on tip-toes, superstitiously praying for rain so we don't have to relive that beautiful, blue-skied day.
I am lonely. I feel that we, as a nation, have alienated all our friends and further provoked our enemies. I feel unprotected. Most of all I feel alienated from my fellow citizens, because I don't understand what you are thinking. You voted for a man who started a war in Iraq for no reason, against the wishes of the entire world. You voted for a man whose lack of foresight and inability to plan has led to massive insurgencies in Iraq, where weapons are disappearing into the hands of terrorists. You voted for a man who let Osama Bin Laden escape into the hills of Afghanistan so that he could start that war in Iraq. You voted for a man who doesn't want to let people love who they want to love; doesn't want to let doctors cure their patients; doesn't want to let women rule their destinies. I don't understand why you voted for this man. For me, it is not enough that he is personable; it is not enough that he seems like one of the guys. Why did you vote for him? Why did you elect a man that lied to us in order to convince us to go to war? (Ten years ago you were incensed when our president lied about his sex life; you thought it was an impeachable offense.) Why did you elect a leader who thinks that strength cannot include diplomacy or international cooperaton?"
-pradagirl
Talking Points:
"Yes, I'm sad. And shocked. And kind of angry. As others have said, the majority of my country shares nowhere near my values.
But the message here is pretty clear -- you get points for presentation. The Republicans not only defined Bush clearly and consicely, they were allowed to define Kerry."
-liz_w
"I get that the Democrats fucked up and that we, in part, as citizens fucked up by not speaking and acting out early enough, but I still feel as if this entire campaign was taken away from us. It took private, polarizing issues to the public and it swept the real economic and civic and terror threats right under the fucking rug."
-stargems
"It is the moral choice to protect our salmon from being overfished. It is the moral choice to protect our neighbors from illegal search and seizure. It is the moral choice to prevent the government from imposing religious prohibition on whom we choose to live our lives with."
-kingofthewho
"Of course more than half the country responded to fear mongering. We live in a society that has spent years setting itself up for it. We spood feed people fear on the evening news (where you'll also learn the ten new meds that your kid should be on today!) and sell it to them like an accessory in their new SUV (now more prone to rolling over and killing your entire family in a firey crash!) We teach them to be afraid of their neighbor (who might be a black criminal!) and their kid's teacher (who might be a gay evolutionist!) and the fucking mailman (who is suspiciously dark-skinned and possibly carrying anthrax!) and then are surprised when they buy into it from the president? ORANGE ALERT! QUICK! DUCK AND COVER!"
-smartlikejustin
My biggest pet peeve so far: "Dude, I'm so moving to Canada!"
NO. It doesn't work that way. Just because the Republicans won the election does not mean they get to keep the fucking country. This is not a game of marbles. They do not get to pick up their ball and go the hell home with it.
-trollprincess
"And you know, all those people talking about safety? DC and New York voted overwhelmingly against Bush. Every place actually touched by terrorism voted against Bush."
-callmesandy
"[D]umbya didn't show much restraint as far as doing whatever he damn well pleased the first four years; now that he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected [I] can't imagine the scope of his empire."
-livehead16
"So okay, screw Bush. He's gone in four years. And yeah, his damaging foreign and social policies will be here and will fuck things up for years to come. Just like Reagan's (trickle down where?) and just like Clinton's (Defense of what?) and just like every other fucking idiot man who's run this country four to eight (or more!) years at a time. That's not the problem. The problem is that the media has convinced us not to ask questions and the corporations have convinced us to substitute retail for thought and it's all crap and we all need to get self-aware and media literate and educated and that's where we should take all our fight back energy. That and local politics which is where the everyday monotonous battles start and where the leaders of tomorrow (Obama, anyone?) take shape. Everyone always thinks they're living in the end times and they very rarely actually are. And if it is the fall of Rome? I doubt there's much we can do to stop it, so we may as well just make it tolerable until it's time for the lions and the burning."
-smartlikejustin
"Read history. Read US history from 1800 to 1900. It wasn't all Civil War or Mexican War or Reconstruction or the Wild West (which only lasted about 15-20 years, overall.) It takes time for ideas and wisdom to percolate through an electorate. It took decades to get the idea through people's minds that slavery was (and is) wrong, that it is fundamentally unjust to treat certain people as a subclass because of the color of their skin, which they cannot change. Some people have still not gotten that through their heads; others choose other ways of dividing up people, such as gay vs. straight, or female vs. male, or officially holy vs not so shiny, but the result is still the same -- one group in, with privileges, and the other out, with penalties. This kind of thing helps nobody.
The hard work is just beginning. It takes that kind of digging in to make things work sometimes."
-twistedchick
"JFK once challenged us to ask what we could do for our country. Today, that's asking us to hang on for four more years, enjoy what we can of our lives, embrace those we can assist, and keep a wary eye on our civil liberties to ensure they don't erode. Or, as has also been said:
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Unfortunately, the price just done gone up..."
-dj_writes
Things To Keep In Mind
"The United States is about potential. No other country has a dream named after it, a dream about improvement and achievement."
-without_me
"Bush does not represent the American people. He represents half of them. And really, he represents half of 60% of eligible voters."
-seeksasylum
"[Bush] holds the distinction of having the highest percentage of votes cast against a sitting President in history.
...At the end of the day Republicans won close Senate races and the presidency principally by appealing to fear, hate, and prejudice. Well-meaning, non-homophobic Republicans may rationalize this by saying that it's a small price to pay for a strong leader who will keep them safe. (Ahem.) But they know better. They know better when they avoid the subject with their gay friends, and they know better when they hear the bile coming from the religious leaders and everyday bigots they depend on for votes but wouldn't be caught dead associating with. Deep down they know a tax cut isn't worth a soul, and security without principles is meaningless."
- Sean Aday
"The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%)..."
- Michael Moore
About young voter turnout, approximately 4.6 million more people under the age of 30 voted in this election than in 2000. Remember that when they quote that the voting bloc was only 17% of that bracket, about the same as in 2000, that's only the same percentage-wise, as a much, much larger chunk of the public turned out to vote in this election. And in battleground states, about 64.4% of the eligible voters in that bloc turned out, which isn't what it should be, but it's in the double-digits higher than 2000.
- Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement
"It might be that people who voted for Bush could be persuaded toward more liberal and progressive views if only the Democrats could find a way to speak to them."
dick_grayson
"We gotta play like old-school Angel; if nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do. Social justice was never going to come from above, and if we are in fact, as determined to have our voices heard as those inbred Jesus freaks in the red states who are so afraid of fags and terrorists that they'll shoot themselves in the foot, then we gotta do the work. Boring meetings, local protests. If a fuckhead pharmacist refuses to fill your birth control, don't just stare at him and go, "what?" Scream at the top of your lungs. Embarrass the hell out of that fascist. Don't roll over if someone's taking your rights away, or intimidating you into silence. No more of that.
We can't win by being moderate Republicans. We may not win by being progressives, but hell. It'd feel a lot better losing being represented by someone who could say flat out, "dude, you and your people are serious? Gay marriage is ruining America? Go back under your rock."
If we learned nothing else from this election, it's that just under half the country thinks the way we do to some extent; they're looking for space to speak. Well....no one in a Bush administration is going to hand it to you; you're gonna have to take it."
-jennyo
"I'm *embarrassed*, sure. But not ashamed. And...no offense to the people in other countries? But I'm getting kind of tired of the America-bashing. You can think that we're boors and rednecks and whatever; you can complain about how American culture is taking over your own; you can complain that we're imposing our values and whatever on you and I won't deny it. I can't. That's how you feel and what am I supposed to do about it?
But you know what? Just like there are democrats in Texas and gay people in Mississippi, there are Americans who think that we should be held accountable to the ICC and that our foreign policy sucks and that gay people are really okay. So, you know, I would really appreciate it if, like, the rest of the world would stop treating all of us like social lepers because half of us have issues. 50% of us voted to get Bush out of office. Actually, you know? No. I'm not going to be all diplomatic here.
Yes, it sucks for you that the US is a superpower and that our current administration has adopted a policy of OMG We R teh best EVAR!!! It really does. I'm not denying that. But I'm really tired of being told I'm not sexy 'cause I'm an American or that I'm somehow backwards or that we're some kind of ignorant gauche thing because we don't have castles. I don't care if that store on your corner street is older than my country. We've done pretty well for being such a young country and we're getting there. 'cause Europe? I'm just sayin'. If I wanted to be all finger-pointy, I totally could do it.
Stop trying to make me feel bad about my country. Trust me, I don't need your help.
There are things that I think are seriously fucked up in the US. I think that the current administration would just as soon spit in my eye as look at me. I think that my civil liberties are probably going to be fucked with.
But you know what else?
I think that we can change things. I think that Barack Obama gives me hope and that Barbara Boxer is pretty darn keen. I think that all those blue counties in the red states deserve a hell of a lot of love and a lot of support. I think that as disheartening as the election yesterday was, and as hopeless as I felt when it seemed like the majority of this country decided they were going to support a man who, I honestly believe, stands for everything that is wrong with my our country rather than a man who offered us the glimmer of a chance to support what is best about our country, I still love my country."
-mimesere
Now me. The thing is, leaving the country won't help. How much more dangerous can the United States become without the tempering force of the vocal, active minority of liberal activists like many of you on my friendslist? It'd be more manageable if the US were simply a small, upstart state - but it's not, in case that needed to be said. It's arguably the most powerful country in the world. It has weapons, it has a standing army, it likes using both, and it's no less reluctant to repress the civil rights of those outside its borders than those within it. That is why we have to stay, why we have to pursue Voter fraud allegations, why we have to fight for the rights threatened by the zealous right who'd have us reneg on the promises of our founding fathers for a land of godless law. The Kerry camp really didn't run the kind of effective, well-targeted campaign that could've made the country's middle even a little more blue, but that doesn't mean where people took it into their hands, it didn't make a difference.
I'm afraid of just what the Christian right, whom an analyst as much as said delivered Bush the election, will come calling to collect for their support. I'll admit it - I voted not so much for Kerry but for change, and the Democratic party was my likeliest prospect of getting someone in the highest office in the land to begin that process. That it'll have to start a lot farther down the chain of influence doesn't make it impossible, and it's perhaps the way to talk to those neighbors who voted for Bush and ask why. It's all of our right and responsibility to voice discontentment when the elected officials, whether we voted for them or not, aren't doing what we feel is right, and that makes none of us un-American. We pay the government officials' salaries, and it is their responsibility to respond.
And finally, assaturn92103 noted:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
- Pastor Martin Niemoller
Now if you'll excuse me, I owe Jon Stewart gay sex in a library. It's the least I can do for how much he's helped me over the past few days.
[breathes deeply] That was reactionary, yet cleansing. There's a bit more of that here, but there's also strategy, and advice, and reasons to believe there's no hole Dubya can dig in four years that we can't, if we work at it, dig ourselves out of. The completist in me has scoured and read as much of LiveJournal and other sites as I've within my scope. You've been funny, you've been poignant, you've been grave, but thank whatever powers that be because beyond any of that, you haven't been silent. Don't let that change.
Zingers:
"God will have a legitimate role in politics when he starts paying his fucking taxes. NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUTTAXATION, yo."
-
nostalgia_lj"I for one welcome the return of our tyrannical neoconservative overlords and pray they lead us to righteous victory against gays, the french, stem cell research, abortion and the environment. Amen."
-
mock2"[Bush] won the election, according to the exit polls, because the public looked long and hard at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 1,122 dead and 8,039 injured american soldiers, over 16,352 dead iraqi civilians, a $413 billion budget deficit, a $489.4 billion trade deficit, and 821,000 jobs lost.
And then they looked at two men walking down the aisle in San Fransisco.
And they decided they'd rather have the former than risk the latter."
-
ktl"Dear Red America,
As you lower the flag draped coffin of your son into a hole in the ground, I'm sure it will bring you great comfort to know that his last thoughts as he lay bleeding to death thousands of miles from home was probably, 'At least those gays can't get married.'
No doubt the solid grip of your assault rifle will be wonderful company as you linger painfully from an illness that could have been cured with early intervention had you not lost your health insurance.
When you stare at your eviction notice, wondering where and how you and your family will live on your three minimum wage job salaries, you can stand strong knowing that, while little Suzie may not have dinner tomorrow, at least she'll never have safe, legal access to an abortion.
And as the world around you devolves into violence and chaos, as you become less and less safe every passing moment, as your civil liberties are stripped away even as your security dwindles you be sure to shout it loud and proud that God was, in fact, on your side."
-
just_eunice"And yeah. You would also think it was a hint when almost the entire minority population votes for one of the candidates. If were weren't us, we'd invade us in an attempt to spread democracy and free us from our dictator."
-
dreamscribeAnd the Brits did it well here.
Frustration:
"You know, Mary says a lot that America isn't a place, it's a set of ideals. I dig where she's coming from, but to me, America has always been We the People -- not the concept thereof, but an actual whole bunch of people. And I don't like us very much anymore; I've always said, blah blah, I do love my country, it's just that I don't like *whatever.* But I look at 52% of the people in the country -- 60-odd percent in my state -- and I can't have anything but spite and contempt for their brutality and stupidity, and I just wonder, if I hate *the majority* of the people, by what rights anymore do I say I love the country? The principles, the ideals? Well, I suppose that means I love the *dead* people who came up with them, but who cares?
Now everyone's on about healing and learning to work together, and I'm either so far past that or not there yet. I'm sick of the whole idea of democracy; what the fuck do the *people* know? We pander endlessly to them, sell them the man-of-the-people bullshit, convince them at a walk that a man whose father was for Christ's sake *the President* is a regular guy just like them, and we wave the flag and talk about morals and at the end of the day we convince them to collaborate in their own oppression, to run themselves into decades of debt, to collapse Social Security, to defund their schools and drive up the cost of their health care, to bring back the 60-hour work week with no overtime and make them feel fortunate to have a job at all, to pay money we do not have in order to kill 100,000 men, women, and children who only want their freedom *from us,* and to help the ruling class subvert their Constitutional protections. Clearly if the people knew jack shit about government, they'd be doing a better job of it already."
-
bettyp"It simply boggles the mind: We've already had four years of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and still much of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith, still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant.
Here's the thing: For tens of millions of us, it is simply unconscionable that we could possibly be led for another four years by a small and spoiled little man who has very little real idea what he's doing and even less of how the hell he got there. It would be funny, in a Adam Sandler, toilet-humored sort of way, were it not so poisonous and depressing. And yet it looks like we're stuck with it, like a shard of glass buried deep in the eye.
And the rest of the world? Well, it can only watch us and shake its collective head and wonder just what the hell is wrong with us, why so many millions of us would even consider re-electing the world's most inept and war-hungry and insanely inarticulate man to four more years of unchecked power, why our much-hyped much-coveted supposedly ultra-superior democratic system is so very deeply blotchy and knotty and spoiled."
- Mark Morford for the San Francisco Gate
"So, to all of you who didn't realize or care enough that there was a lot more at stake than just who's going to be making those boring speeches that interrupt your stupid sports or sitcom reruns or whatever the fuck it is you watch on your rat-tweaking Skinner box of a television:
Fuck you. Fuck you in your stupid ass.
If my handsome, talented, funny, brilliant and utterly and distressingly honorable friend with the beautiful, full-of-grace, more-deserving-than-me wife gets sent back to Afghanistan for another year because Bush is STILL in the White House . . . if those baby-lovin', woman hatin' Republicans claim my uterus to breed more soldiers for their asinine wars, it would only serve you right if I personally come to your house and beat your non-voting ass until you are choking on your own blood and vomit. Then I should piss on you and set your fucking house on fire.
But I won't have to do that. It's likely you'll feel like a complete heel after four more years of this shit, without me having to do a thing. It's possible you'll get drafted, and if not you, someone you know. I hope you care about them. I hope you care about them a LOT. I hope you cry into your pillow every goddamn night.
It's possible that while you aren't looking, they'll pass a wonderful, fun law that outlaws one kind of abortion, and then pass another that is even worse. It's possible that courts will begin to support those misguided and reprehensible doctors and pharmacists that deny birth control to people based on their own faulty moral compass. It's possible that you or your girlfriend might end up knocked up and desperate, and unable to do anything about it except cross your fingers and hope. And when the baby you didn't want is in school, guess what? It will not get taught how not to get itself or anyone else pregnant. No. It'll be taught that God created the world in seven days. I hope you really love the smell of dirty diapers, because with one slip, you could be in baby shit up to your nose for the rest of your life.
It's possible that, thanks to medieval legislation, the few good years the gay rights movement has had could be renduced to a single bright candleflame against the black backdrop of ignorance, bigotry, and fear. Anti-sodomy laws for all, including you! I hope you don't get much head now, and I hope you don't like assfucking, because if it isn't illegal where you live where you are now (and you really should know), it might be, soon!
And that kid you couldn't prevent and couldn't abort? Could be gay. Or you could have a gay relative, a gay friend, right now. How would you justify your inaction then? Or, most poetically, you could fall in love with someone of your own sex. Are you going to be the one to explain to your heartbroken son why he can't marry his lover? Are you going to tell your coworker that the reason his partner of 20 years can't legally inheirit without it being contested to Hell and back is that you, and all your kind, couldn't be bothered to switch off Spongebob, crawl out from whatever benighted rock you live under, and push a fucking button, fill in a circle, or draw a little line? Are you going to tell your lover that if you had known, if you had only known that it would make a difference? No. You'll keep quiet. Just like you did yesterday.
Fuck you.
I hope you fall in love with someone of your same sex, want to get married, can't, and then they get drafted and shot, and you don't hear about it for a month, and you hear about it on your fucking birthday or Christmas or something. And you are – somehow – pregnant and unable to get an abortion. Or health care."
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naahman99"He didn't win because people believe in fiscal conservatism or smaller government. Because he doesn't. He's proved that. What he believes in is more guns, less gays and curtailing a woman's right to choose what she can do with her own body. And people in this country were willing to vote against their own needs and self-interest to make sure that, by god, two queers weren't going to get married in their country."
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marythefan"Do you know the crippling fear that comes over you when you suddenly realize the system is not only built to make life your difficult (which it is for almost everyone) but built to reject you? Do you know what it's like to live in the supposedly "most advanced" country on the planet and realize that some white Protestant fucking COWBOY is deciding whether or not you have the right to visit your partner in the hospital when they're sick? I could list a hundred things that anti-gay partnerships/marriage laws deny gay couples. Ask me and I'll do it.
...That's what the Bush supporters voted for tonight. Yes, there are other issues. But we're talking about the basic human rights of equality here in our own fucking country. If you're not going to start there, where the hell do you start?"
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beizy"I am not safe. I never feel safe. My in-laws live in a small town in Ohio, and that town has received more federal funding, per capita, for terrorism preparedness than New York City has. I take subways and buses every day. I work in a skyscraper across the street from a "target." I have emergency supplies and a spare pair of sneakers in my desk, in case somethng happens while I'm at work. Do you? How many times a month do you worry that your subway is going to blow up? When you hear sirens on the street, do you run to the window to make sure everything is okay? When you hear an airplane, do you flinch? Do you dread beautiful, blue-skied September days? I don't know a single New Yorker who doesn't spend the month of September on tip-toes, superstitiously praying for rain so we don't have to relive that beautiful, blue-skied day.
I am lonely. I feel that we, as a nation, have alienated all our friends and further provoked our enemies. I feel unprotected. Most of all I feel alienated from my fellow citizens, because I don't understand what you are thinking. You voted for a man who started a war in Iraq for no reason, against the wishes of the entire world. You voted for a man whose lack of foresight and inability to plan has led to massive insurgencies in Iraq, where weapons are disappearing into the hands of terrorists. You voted for a man who let Osama Bin Laden escape into the hills of Afghanistan so that he could start that war in Iraq. You voted for a man who doesn't want to let people love who they want to love; doesn't want to let doctors cure their patients; doesn't want to let women rule their destinies. I don't understand why you voted for this man. For me, it is not enough that he is personable; it is not enough that he seems like one of the guys. Why did you vote for him? Why did you elect a man that lied to us in order to convince us to go to war? (Ten years ago you were incensed when our president lied about his sex life; you thought it was an impeachable offense.) Why did you elect a leader who thinks that strength cannot include diplomacy or international cooperaton?"
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pradagirlTalking Points:
"Yes, I'm sad. And shocked. And kind of angry. As others have said, the majority of my country shares nowhere near my values.
But the message here is pretty clear -- you get points for presentation. The Republicans not only defined Bush clearly and consicely, they were allowed to define Kerry."
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liz_w"I get that the Democrats fucked up and that we, in part, as citizens fucked up by not speaking and acting out early enough, but I still feel as if this entire campaign was taken away from us. It took private, polarizing issues to the public and it swept the real economic and civic and terror threats right under the fucking rug."
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stargems"It is the moral choice to protect our salmon from being overfished. It is the moral choice to protect our neighbors from illegal search and seizure. It is the moral choice to prevent the government from imposing religious prohibition on whom we choose to live our lives with."
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kingofthewho"Of course more than half the country responded to fear mongering. We live in a society that has spent years setting itself up for it. We spood feed people fear on the evening news (where you'll also learn the ten new meds that your kid should be on today!) and sell it to them like an accessory in their new SUV (now more prone to rolling over and killing your entire family in a firey crash!) We teach them to be afraid of their neighbor (who might be a black criminal!) and their kid's teacher (who might be a gay evolutionist!) and the fucking mailman (who is suspiciously dark-skinned and possibly carrying anthrax!) and then are surprised when they buy into it from the president? ORANGE ALERT! QUICK! DUCK AND COVER!"
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smartlikejustinMy biggest pet peeve so far: "Dude, I'm so moving to Canada!"
NO. It doesn't work that way. Just because the Republicans won the election does not mean they get to keep the fucking country. This is not a game of marbles. They do not get to pick up their ball and go the hell home with it.
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trollprincess"And you know, all those people talking about safety? DC and New York voted overwhelmingly against Bush. Every place actually touched by terrorism voted against Bush."
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callmesandy"[D]umbya didn't show much restraint as far as doing whatever he damn well pleased the first four years; now that he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected [I] can't imagine the scope of his empire."
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livehead16"So okay, screw Bush. He's gone in four years. And yeah, his damaging foreign and social policies will be here and will fuck things up for years to come. Just like Reagan's (trickle down where?) and just like Clinton's (Defense of what?) and just like every other fucking idiot man who's run this country four to eight (or more!) years at a time. That's not the problem. The problem is that the media has convinced us not to ask questions and the corporations have convinced us to substitute retail for thought and it's all crap and we all need to get self-aware and media literate and educated and that's where we should take all our fight back energy. That and local politics which is where the everyday monotonous battles start and where the leaders of tomorrow (Obama, anyone?) take shape. Everyone always thinks they're living in the end times and they very rarely actually are. And if it is the fall of Rome? I doubt there's much we can do to stop it, so we may as well just make it tolerable until it's time for the lions and the burning."
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smartlikejustin"Read history. Read US history from 1800 to 1900. It wasn't all Civil War or Mexican War or Reconstruction or the Wild West (which only lasted about 15-20 years, overall.) It takes time for ideas and wisdom to percolate through an electorate. It took decades to get the idea through people's minds that slavery was (and is) wrong, that it is fundamentally unjust to treat certain people as a subclass because of the color of their skin, which they cannot change. Some people have still not gotten that through their heads; others choose other ways of dividing up people, such as gay vs. straight, or female vs. male, or officially holy vs not so shiny, but the result is still the same -- one group in, with privileges, and the other out, with penalties. This kind of thing helps nobody.
The hard work is just beginning. It takes that kind of digging in to make things work sometimes."
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twistedchick"JFK once challenged us to ask what we could do for our country. Today, that's asking us to hang on for four more years, enjoy what we can of our lives, embrace those we can assist, and keep a wary eye on our civil liberties to ensure they don't erode. Or, as has also been said:
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Unfortunately, the price just done gone up..."
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dj_writesThings To Keep In Mind
"The United States is about potential. No other country has a dream named after it, a dream about improvement and achievement."
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without_me"Bush does not represent the American people. He represents half of them. And really, he represents half of 60% of eligible voters."
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seeksasylum"[Bush] holds the distinction of having the highest percentage of votes cast against a sitting President in history.
...At the end of the day Republicans won close Senate races and the presidency principally by appealing to fear, hate, and prejudice. Well-meaning, non-homophobic Republicans may rationalize this by saying that it's a small price to pay for a strong leader who will keep them safe. (Ahem.) But they know better. They know better when they avoid the subject with their gay friends, and they know better when they hear the bile coming from the religious leaders and everyday bigots they depend on for votes but wouldn't be caught dead associating with. Deep down they know a tax cut isn't worth a soul, and security without principles is meaningless."
- Sean Aday
"The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%)..."
- Michael Moore
About young voter turnout, approximately 4.6 million more people under the age of 30 voted in this election than in 2000. Remember that when they quote that the voting bloc was only 17% of that bracket, about the same as in 2000, that's only the same percentage-wise, as a much, much larger chunk of the public turned out to vote in this election. And in battleground states, about 64.4% of the eligible voters in that bloc turned out, which isn't what it should be, but it's in the double-digits higher than 2000.
- Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement
"It might be that people who voted for Bush could be persuaded toward more liberal and progressive views if only the Democrats could find a way to speak to them."
dick_grayson"We gotta play like old-school Angel; if nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do. Social justice was never going to come from above, and if we are in fact, as determined to have our voices heard as those inbred Jesus freaks in the red states who are so afraid of fags and terrorists that they'll shoot themselves in the foot, then we gotta do the work. Boring meetings, local protests. If a fuckhead pharmacist refuses to fill your birth control, don't just stare at him and go, "what?" Scream at the top of your lungs. Embarrass the hell out of that fascist. Don't roll over if someone's taking your rights away, or intimidating you into silence. No more of that.
We can't win by being moderate Republicans. We may not win by being progressives, but hell. It'd feel a lot better losing being represented by someone who could say flat out, "dude, you and your people are serious? Gay marriage is ruining America? Go back under your rock."
If we learned nothing else from this election, it's that just under half the country thinks the way we do to some extent; they're looking for space to speak. Well....no one in a Bush administration is going to hand it to you; you're gonna have to take it."
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jennyo"I'm *embarrassed*, sure. But not ashamed. And...no offense to the people in other countries? But I'm getting kind of tired of the America-bashing. You can think that we're boors and rednecks and whatever; you can complain about how American culture is taking over your own; you can complain that we're imposing our values and whatever on you and I won't deny it. I can't. That's how you feel and what am I supposed to do about it?
But you know what? Just like there are democrats in Texas and gay people in Mississippi, there are Americans who think that we should be held accountable to the ICC and that our foreign policy sucks and that gay people are really okay. So, you know, I would really appreciate it if, like, the rest of the world would stop treating all of us like social lepers because half of us have issues. 50% of us voted to get Bush out of office. Actually, you know? No. I'm not going to be all diplomatic here.
Yes, it sucks for you that the US is a superpower and that our current administration has adopted a policy of OMG We R teh best EVAR!!! It really does. I'm not denying that. But I'm really tired of being told I'm not sexy 'cause I'm an American or that I'm somehow backwards or that we're some kind of ignorant gauche thing because we don't have castles. I don't care if that store on your corner street is older than my country. We've done pretty well for being such a young country and we're getting there. 'cause Europe? I'm just sayin'. If I wanted to be all finger-pointy, I totally could do it.
Stop trying to make me feel bad about my country. Trust me, I don't need your help.
There are things that I think are seriously fucked up in the US. I think that the current administration would just as soon spit in my eye as look at me. I think that my civil liberties are probably going to be fucked with.
But you know what else?
I think that we can change things. I think that Barack Obama gives me hope and that Barbara Boxer is pretty darn keen. I think that all those blue counties in the red states deserve a hell of a lot of love and a lot of support. I think that as disheartening as the election yesterday was, and as hopeless as I felt when it seemed like the majority of this country decided they were going to support a man who, I honestly believe, stands for everything that is wrong with my our country rather than a man who offered us the glimmer of a chance to support what is best about our country, I still love my country."
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mimesereNow me. The thing is, leaving the country won't help. How much more dangerous can the United States become without the tempering force of the vocal, active minority of liberal activists like many of you on my friendslist? It'd be more manageable if the US were simply a small, upstart state - but it's not, in case that needed to be said. It's arguably the most powerful country in the world. It has weapons, it has a standing army, it likes using both, and it's no less reluctant to repress the civil rights of those outside its borders than those within it. That is why we have to stay, why we have to pursue Voter fraud allegations, why we have to fight for the rights threatened by the zealous right who'd have us reneg on the promises of our founding fathers for a land of godless law. The Kerry camp really didn't run the kind of effective, well-targeted campaign that could've made the country's middle even a little more blue, but that doesn't mean where people took it into their hands, it didn't make a difference.
I'm afraid of just what the Christian right, whom an analyst as much as said delivered Bush the election, will come calling to collect for their support. I'll admit it - I voted not so much for Kerry but for change, and the Democratic party was my likeliest prospect of getting someone in the highest office in the land to begin that process. That it'll have to start a lot farther down the chain of influence doesn't make it impossible, and it's perhaps the way to talk to those neighbors who voted for Bush and ask why. It's all of our right and responsibility to voice discontentment when the elected officials, whether we voted for them or not, aren't doing what we feel is right, and that makes none of us un-American. We pay the government officials' salaries, and it is their responsibility to respond.
And finally, as
saturn92103 noted:First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
- Pastor Martin Niemoller
Now if you'll excuse me, I owe Jon Stewart gay sex in a library. It's the least I can do for how much he's helped me over the past few days.
