Red Sox win. Halfway to normal?

<![CDATA[I was sitting with four Brits watching the Red Sox win last night, talking about the different pitches and what the strike zone is and how it all compared to cricket, when someone in the bar said "Well, we're halfway back to normal life, if we could only get the election over with."
How true. My nerves are worn raw, there's a venom flowing through the electorate that is destroying our system. I've been an asshole responding to people lately and I'm only half conscious, it seems, leaving extra zeros out of the number of tons of explosives the Bushies lost. I know Republicans who think I am an enemy of the state for my opinions.
This is the first election I can remember—ever, and I doorbelled for Nixon, the paragon of divisiveness or so we thought until 2000, ferchrissake—that seems to be based on total disrespect for differences of opinion. I respected Democrats when I was a Republican and respect and still vote for the occasional Republican.
We have a president who mocks his opponent like a third grade bully rather than talking about the issues like an adult speaking to adults. A vote for Kerry, according to people who have commented here and at Correspondences.org, is a vote for everything from Satan to socialism. And I am sick of it, it just needs to be over, so we can start to rebuild a polity from the scraps.
Even if it means another four years of fighting the dissolution of American freedom conducted by the extreme right, the end of the election will be a relief. Sure, the extreme religious right will be starting to build the concentration camps, but we’ll know what we’re fighting and everyone will see it for what it is when Bush/Cheney claim they have a “mandate.”
There is no more “normal,” I guess, just raw history, breaking over our broken bloodied civic body like waves of salt pouring into the wounds. The American spirit has been shattered by the fear-mongering of the Bush Administration and its toadies in the media. Bluster and absolutism has replaced confident American optimism and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
At least the Red Sox broke the curse.
Here’s my prediction for next Tuesday: Kerry 303 electoral college votes to Bush’s 235. That is, if Karl Rove doesn’t disrupt the vote count, and he is already gearing up to do it.
Normal…. I’d give a kidney to see an election close to normal, in which the extreme right was willing to live with the choice made by the majority of their fellow citizens. I fear for my children on the eve of the national choice, which has come to feel like being strapped into Dr. Kevorkian’s miraculous self-inflicted death machine. Elections used to fill me with hope. Normal, with all its uncertainty and hard work sounds pretty good to me right now.]]>