It's not getting better

I am not getting a perspective on this election. I am not getting back my knee-jerk hope for America. I'm just stunned. I listened to Bush this morning outline his plans for this presidency. He was cocky and arrogant. He told a reporter that now that he had political capital and he was going to spend it, that was his "style." And that’s what he had after the 2000 election. Then he snickered. It's so cruel and indecent. Can you imagine Kerry saying something remotely like that? Really, I feel I am living in a nightmare - like I'm going to wake up and this will not have happened.

The topic of the day on the news was how morals and family values swayed the election. I just don't understand how people can think that preventing two consenting adults from making a legal agreement to each other, how that offends someone’s morality? No one is forcing them to join in a homosexual union. Do they think that if gay marriage is not allowed that homosexuality will not be practiced? How is it moral to prevent a marriage between two people who want to commit to each other? How is it moral to force a woman to have a baby when she cannot provide for it and when the world is already vastly overpopulated? How is that moral?

I can't bridge the divide in America by coming closer to their point of view on these values issues. It’s frankly immoral to me that they hold such picayune, small minded issues to be ones of morality. When they mask a deep immorality. Bush said the top things on his agenda were reforming Social Security and the Tax code, both things that have deeply dividing, immoral consequences if done the way he wants them to be. Democrats have to take back the corner on "morality" and "values." What a convoluted distortion of truth. What a misunderstanding of what morality is. It's like our populace is ethically bankrupt. They cannot distinquish between ethics and religion. They think being religious is being good. It's so desperately sad that this is what so many people think.

For the first time I am glad my father is dead. On the whole run up to the election, I wished every single day I could call him and discuss something. The debates, we would have talked and talked about the debates. But my father would have been so deeply disturbed by this election. I am glad he is spared of it.

The reports keep saying that ministers in church's helped tremendously in getting out the moral values vote. I am filled with anger at these people. They have been so badly used and they think it's in the name of God! They have cheapened spirituality and led their congregants down a dark tunnel where they can concentrate on small issues that do not effect them, and while they are feeling "good" about being so "moral" their preachers are allowing them to be robbed and their children to be robbed of their future. I wonder if this can be rectified.

I just want to move to Hawaii. I want to live on Kauai and just look at the sky every night and have a garden. And I want to move to D.C. and do something about this horrible mess. I am so disappointed in the Floridians. And the people of Ohio – my goodness. This is just very, very sad. Things can change dramatically from small wrong turns.

I keep thinking I'll get some grounding, some perspective. But I just can't. And obviously I keep saying the same things over and over here. But I just can't get far enough away from the dissapointment and hurt and anger to get some clear grounding yet. And I want to.