Bippy the Beardless
Oh I think the election showed more than the US is anti-gay. It showed it is also anti-abortion and anti-intellectual. Hard to believe we re-elected a turnip-IQ moron who can’t even put a decent sentence together.
And I think it showed the US has an unequivocal “pro-phony” mentality. Sure Dubya is a hero - didn’t you see him strut around that aircraft carrier in his flight suit? I’ll award him the John Wayne Lifetime Achievement Award for phony patriotism.
And he’s just a regular guy - just like the folks in the heartland. Except he went to Yale (with BIG help from Dad) - had help dodging the draft - oh and he’s rich. But other than that he’s just good ol’ folk like you an’ me.
Sorry for the thread hijack. And to repeat - I found Sept 11, 2001 to be more devastating, depressing, etc than the 2004 election. (Even though we re-elected a turnip.)
I’m a cold-blooded SOB, and 9/11, like most faraway tragedies, didn’t break my stride. I live in California, have seen NY only once, and will probably never see Ground Zero. There was some low-level jitteriness about security on the bridges and on airplanes, but nothing that put me off traveling on either one. I’m more traumatized by a middle-sized earthquake.
The election, OTOH, had me twitching with suppressed rage for days, and I entertained violent fantasies for…well, I haven’t stopped, actually. I’m neither distracted nor depressed by it, though.
Election.
9/11 was terrible. But as AHunter3 has said:
“The election, representing as it does the US ratification of the crimes committed in our name by the Bush administration, is a much more serious threat to our freedoms, our way of life, and the likelihood of the US continuing to make any viable claim to leading the world towards consensual & democratic organization.”
As much as 9/11 hurt … it hurts me more that so many people around me are so clueless. When I try to look at it objectively, I think … BinLaden listed his grievances with America, and attacked. Then Bush proved all those grievances were valid. Then We The People endorsed Bush. It makes me sick to look at it like that. I do not think the attack was justified, even with ‘valid grievances’. But the idea that America just continues to make the same mistakes, repeat history, and ignore the long-term big picture is much more depressing to me.
9/11
I avoided posting to this thread for a long time because I could not sort out my feelings. I still can’t very well.
We sometimes speak of 9/11 like it is over, finished. But children are still living without parents, wives and husbands and lovers are still alone. And parents are still trying to learn how to live without their bright and wonderful children. So much life and promise snuffed out by one indecent act of cowardice. It was a sentinel event in our collective history but for so many it was simply the day that the person they loved best was gone forever. That is enough sadness to last a lifetime. I still cry to think about it. It is so much hurt it is palpable to me.
The election made me feel anger, frustration, disbelief. I live in Atlanta, GA and felt my state would go red but since most of the people I know and love wanted Bush out of office we fought for a miracle. We never wanted him there to begin with actually, and thought surely with the gross mismanagement of our country and the total squandering of our place in the world community he would not be re-elected. I was devastated. Most of the people I know were and, additionally, we were generalized and called “red staters”, disallowing us the comfort of like minded cohort. A minor, but painful, point.
But with the election I at least have the opportunity to galvanize my anger and frustration into hope that we can change the direction we are going. I know this may sound naive to some; it does to me when I type it, but I think it is imperative that we not lose sight of the fact that our democracy is a living thing and it can respond to change.
I have no choice but to feel sadness in regards to 9/11. There is nothing I can do to change that outcome. There will be another election…and another. And I plan to be just as deadset, if not more so, to try to impact the outcome. It’s how I sleep at night.
…and then I think of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans who are in similar straits, thanks to our President’s incompetence, and I feel even worse.
Brilliantly put. Ditto.
I was angry, frustrated and a number of other things after the election, but I’m not sure about depressed. That’s the nice thing about being mad, it keeps you from being depressed. After September 11th I was in a pretty profound state of shock for about a week and was depressed, or out of sorts in some way however you want to describe it, until the end of the year. I’d say that’s the more profound reaction by far.
The election because I feel I could have done more to get people voting out* Bush.
*out - the easiest verb that isn’t “against” and that isn’t meant to imply he was legally elected in the first place
9/11.
I voted for Bush, so I’m of course not depressed about his win at all. I was upset for a while when Clinton was reelected, but I got over it a few weeks after the election. It sucks, and you doubt half the country’s intelligence and sanity, but there’s comfort in knowing that there’s another election in 4 years and the guy you loathe can’t run again. ::shrugs::
9/11 though, even three years later reading something about that day is occasionally enough to make me cry. There has never been another event in my lifetime that has affected people at large so deeply, and it’s scary to think that there might be another one someday. I think that’s the most depressing thing: now that this pandora’s box has been opened, you can’t shake the knowledge that these things in fact do happen in this country, and they could happen again. That disillusionment is a wound that won’t fully heal.
You know, the election wasn’t just a game, with some people winning and some people losing, and the people who are miserable about its outcome just being sore losers.
9/11 was a terrible tragedy, and I was shocked, horrified, furious when it happened. BUt it was external to us: the victims were like victims of a natural disaster. They died through absolutely no fault of their own. The crime was simply that: a crime - larger in scope than any we have experienced before, but a crime nevertheless.
Terrorism could be a hundred times worse in this country, and I’d still be at more risk driving to an airport than flying on a plane. My odds are considerably greater of getting hit by lightening than being the victim of a terrorist attack. So I never had any sense of personal vulnerability increased by the attack of 9/11. I did not know anyone killed in the attack, so it was not a personal tragedy. Unlike many of you, while I was, again, grieved, horrified, furiously angry and very unhappy about 9/11, it didn’t change my life or outlook on life. If things will never be the same for me because of it, it will be because of our responses to it, not the event itself.
But the election shook me at a fundamental level. Not so much because Bush won, but because he won the popular vote by a significant amount. Suddenly I became aware of just how utterly alien the majority of my countrymen are to me, and it was and is devastating beyond my experience.
FWIW, the first Bush election has already cost 100,000 Iraqi lives, so from a human tragedy standpoint it can certainly be reasonably considered to outrank 9/11. But even if this weren’t the case, it is perfectly reasonable to be significantly more depressed about an event that, to you, demonstrates your alienation from, and the moral and/or intellectual bankruptcy of the majority of your fellow citizens than an event that, while tragic in its loss of life, is in essence a random disaster not unlike a hurricane or tornado, and I resent your smug implication of shallowness, DougC. In the long run, the election will have far broader impact (for good or ill) on the US and the world than the events of 9/11, and it is hardly lacking perspective to recognize it.