Overwhelming grief
Nov. 3rd, 2004 06:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrRob, who had been watching the election returns all night, came and woke me about forty-five minutes ago and held me while I cried.
Injustice won. Now this man who has made an unprecedented power grab for the executive branch, who authorized the use of torture, who has trampled on civil rights, who has lied and lied and lied to the American people, is going to have the chance to reshape the Supreme Court for the next generation. Bigotry won. I cannot bear it that the bigot's side of the argument on a civil rights issue that I care so deeply about, gay civil rights, was what pushed conservative voters out to the polls to return this man to the White House. Stupidity won. He totally lost track of who attacked us on September 11, he has ignored the threat of North Korea and Iran, he has failed to guard the borders, he has taken us into an unjust, immoral and unnecessary war which has killed our people and a hundred thousand Iraquis, spent our resources, inflamed the world against us and multiplied our enemies a thousandfold.
And we have rewarded him by returning him to the White House.
I have never been so ashamed to be called a Christian, if people who call themselves Christian feel that they are honoring their religion by voting for him over John Kerry. I have never been so afraid and so grief-stricken for my country, no, not even after September 11, because this time we are administering the wound to ourselves.
Injustice won. Now this man who has made an unprecedented power grab for the executive branch, who authorized the use of torture, who has trampled on civil rights, who has lied and lied and lied to the American people, is going to have the chance to reshape the Supreme Court for the next generation. Bigotry won. I cannot bear it that the bigot's side of the argument on a civil rights issue that I care so deeply about, gay civil rights, was what pushed conservative voters out to the polls to return this man to the White House. Stupidity won. He totally lost track of who attacked us on September 11, he has ignored the threat of North Korea and Iran, he has failed to guard the borders, he has taken us into an unjust, immoral and unnecessary war which has killed our people and a hundred thousand Iraquis, spent our resources, inflamed the world against us and multiplied our enemies a thousandfold.
And we have rewarded him by returning him to the White House.
I have never been so ashamed to be called a Christian, if people who call themselves Christian feel that they are honoring their religion by voting for him over John Kerry. I have never been so afraid and so grief-stricken for my country, no, not even after September 11, because this time we are administering the wound to ourselves.
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Mixed feelings
Date: 2004-11-03 05:44 am (UTC)I'm still pondering this, and what I told someone on Heidi's LJ--holding others to your own interpretations will always limit an ability to understand their perceptions. Things you seem to take as self-evident, I may not consider to be valid. If two sides don't start on the same page, with the same assumptions, the conclusions cannot help but differ. So for a very broad response, I'd say that I don't share some of your assumptions, and so have not reached the same conclusions.
Cold comfort for you, that; or none--except maybe that the vision you have, full of reason to despair, is far from the only future possible; just the only one you're seeing right now.
~Amandageist
Re: Mixed feelings
Date: 2004-11-03 05:53 am (UTC)I am capable of changing my mind about things, and I have. But I think that the America you want is not the America I want. And I don't think it's the America that the rest of the world wants.
And I KNOW it's not the America I want for my children.
Re: Mixed feelings
Date: 2004-11-03 07:22 am (UTC)Nor my children's children...
The repercussions may be endless, and that is what I fear most.