I didn't sleep at all well last night. Nightmarish
visions of a
Bush presidency danced in my head; I imagined the
United States transformed into
The Handmaid's Tale as the
religious right sunk their teeth into their coke-snorting, killhappy, drunk-driving idiot richboy
dilettante. I dislike
Gore, he's uncharismatic,
elitist,
arrogant and
stodgy but I fear for the
human rights under a Bush term in office, especially since the winner of this disturbingly close election will choose perhaps as many as three
supreme court justices. I didn't want to vote for Gore, but I realized that a vote for
Hagelin or
Nader would possibly be a vote for Bush, and that frightened me into voting for someone I supported with little enthusiasm.
There are so many things that disturb me about Bush, but even more disturbs me about the people who voted for him, people who said things like, "I like the way he talks better" have these people been listening? Bush has said some of the most unbelievably stupid things I've ever read -- a few quotes attributed to him I was sure were phony until I saw them verified by chillingly reliable sourses like the associated press. I called a close friend of mine and jokingly told him that I wished I could be with him on the last night of the civilized world.
But this morning was even worse. With the complete certainty of a Bush win gone, I dared to hope for Gore to win(funny how someone I see as a mediocre choice and for whom I did not decide to cast my vote for until the last moment becomes a "hope"). Anne Sexton, that crafty fur-wearing, suicidal bitch taunts me again and whispers what I have chosen as my quote for E2 "The worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope". Brutal. When I got to work this morning, I found that a few people I work with had voted for Bush, when I asked, "why?" I found that the only reason they supported him was that they were against abortion. I was infuriated at first, wondering how they could support someone who does not have any of their best interests at heart (these people are first generation immigrants who have worked low-paying jobs) but then I was just sadly resigned. It looks like a return to the Reagan years, and Clinton's silly bridge to the next century is going to be demolished for a time warp back.
Gore won this state handily, and he carried Illinois and New York, and the boost from California has given him a slight edge in the popular vote. He will likely loose by the narrowest of margins in Florida. If anything, this may serve as a wake-up call for the United States to demolish the silly electoral voting system. Why can't americans vote directly for the president?
Otherwise, I was surprised to learn that Alabama still had an anti-miscegenation law on the books that was repealed yesterday. Opposition came from the Southern Party, a confederate heritate group. Cnn quoted one of its leaders as saying
"Interracial marriage is bad for our Southern culture."
Which I found amusing because of
research I did for a college
geneology project which included extensive study of
passe blancs. Apparently, race-mixing has been hugely
prevalent in southern states, especially where
octoroons and
quadroons (people with some, but little
african descent) were pale or european enough in feature to pass into
white society. And many wealthy antebellum southern planters kept
Quadroon mistresses. I guess what he meant was that it's okay to treat non-whites as
whores, but bad to bring them
home to mother.
This has been a tiresome day.