The Darkest Day of the Year

Those of us who gave our all to the Kerry/Edwards campaign were filled with hope that we really could elect Kerry and help our country head in a new direction. Optimism was in the air. Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com wrote,

"I realized I was experiencing a startling surge of relief, of happiness, of well-being. Whatever it was, it coursed through my body and made me realize how deeply George Bush and his cronies had gotten under my skin."

Then the shock set in. Bush had won. Despair. Hopelessness. Sadness. Grief. Tears. Wednesday was the darkest day of the year. For me it was one of the darkest of my whole life. Engelhardt wrote of his concerns:

• the next 100,000 people who will die in the killing fields of Iraq
• the northern glaciers and the polar ice which will disappear in a globally warmed world
• the fate of the Supreme Court and those citizens who find themselves jailed on the President's whims
• the hideous and useless new weapons systems on which our money will now be squandered
• the administration's race to militarize space
• the neocons who will now eagerly promote war with Syria, Iran, North Korea, and God knows where else
• a world in which the Bush administration controls the White House, Congress, and the courts, and now even the CIA where Bush has put his own political operatives into powerful positions

Engelhardt writes about the hangover we are experiencing. Many of us are gradually coming out of the depths we felt on Wednesday, a day when I could hardly speak. The verbiage on TV or even Air America Radio was too difficult to listen to. I resented those who were pontificating about the election. Couldn't they take at least a day or two to let the feelings sink in before taking off full speed ahead to counteract what has happened?

[Click on the blog title to read Tom's article "The Election Hangover of a Lifetime."]