11.01.2004
This story is from The Guardian. I have kept away from my blog, because I am sick of this. Sick of it all. All. Catatonic is a good word for my state of mind the past 48 hours. The pundits have shrilled. The politicians have spun out to the same decibal level. I tuned in because I can't help myself. Then I saw this article on Drudge (my 'home page'). It is written by (pardon my last minute, uncivil anger) leftist pig-dogs.
As he notes, the America which votes tomorrow is a country riven over morality like never before. On the flip side of the culture of ubiquitous sex is that of puritan Christianity, as harnessed in no small part by Bush. "Yes, there is this puritanism," says Wolfe, "and I suppose we are talking here about what you might call the religious right. But I don't think these people are left or right, they are just religious, and if you are religious, you observe certain strictures on sexual activity - you are against the mainstream, morally speaking. And I do have sympathy with them, yes, though I am not religious. I am simply in awe of it all; the openness of sex. In the 60s they talked about a sexual revolution, but it has become a sexual carnival."
I do think Mr Tom called that one right. Those of us here in fly-over country are not the shrill school teachers heard in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'. Contrary to popular east and west coast belief, we are not the hard task masters of their rotten, modern day fable. Au contrare, mon frere, we are, indeed, kinder and gentler. We just know right from wrong, and are proud of our diminishing capablilites in so discerning. W rings true.
"Indeed, I was at a similar [NYC] dinner, listening to the same conversation [informed 'fly-overs' know the drill], and said: 'If all else fails, you can vote for Bush.' People looked at me as if I had just said: 'Oh, I forgot to tell you, I am a child molester.' I would vote for Bush if for no other reason than to be at the airport waving off all the people who say they are going to London if he wins again. Someone has got to stay behind."
Mr Tom, may that be the case. I will be here, and so will a whole lot of my friends, kith, and kin.
"I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' - a confusing term to Guardian readers, I agree - which here means, literally, middle America [note that is from where I hail, and so state]. I come from one of those states myself, Virginia. It's the same resentment, indeed, as that against your own newspaper when it sent emails targeting individuals in an American county." Wolfe laughs as he chastises. "No one cares to have outsiders or foreigners butting into their affairs. I'm sure that even many of those Iraqis who were cheering the fall of Saddam now object to our being there. As I said, I do not think the excursion is going well."
What will life be like, for us political animals, come November 3rd? Times like this, and I envy the life of the Amish, who are all blissfully and faithfully removed from the animus of 'the English'.
"I do think," he admits, apparently speaking for himself, his country and his president, "that if you are not having a fight with somebody, then you are not sure whether you are alive when you wake up in the morning."
With that, I think we Americans are acutely animate. God bless us all. In the end, we are all children of Abraham, come what may...
