Obligatory Thoughts on the Re-election of GWB

"Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal ('The Great Relearning,' as novelist Tom Wolfe calls it) — no less in legislation than in federal court appointments. It is, after all, the main reason George W. Bush was reelected."

Thus writes Bill Bennett his doughy face alight in flabby celebration, presiding over a tea party of assholes at The National Review.

Here in Arkansas it was a morning of rain and hangovers, and as Kerry conceded the vote, the final death knell for pluralism in Washington D.C. for a good while, I happened to be fact checking an article on John C. Calhoun. Generally credited with spawning the Civil War, he was advocate number one for secession, putting forth nullification as a Constitutionally-granted State right. I had to wonder what would happen, for a minute, if the entire block of the North seceded this morning. Ideologically, on the Internet at least, it does not seem implausible.

"Despite living here all my life," laments Nathalie, "I'm not familiar with America." Wonkette offers us Harper's guide to expatriation. Over and over we hear of this great cultural divide between the South/Midwest and the Northeast. I feel the need, in the middle of all this, to reflect on the part of the country I just moved to. Since my parents left Minneapolis for Georgia two and a half years ago, I no longer have a home town. I have voted in four different districts since the last presidential election and I have completely lost touch with the people I grew up with. But after four years in Rhode Island it never felt like any sort of home. I love New York but I spent the majority of time there in total solitude and although anti-depressants made this experience much more pleasant than the same experience in Rhode Island, it was still never home.

So culturally, even though it's only been two months, Arkansas is my home. With the exception of Atlanta, where my parents live, I love the little I have seen of the South, I love the people here. Speaking in generalities I relate to them more than I do Northeasterners and life has just come a little bit easier since I moved here. But it makes me really fucking upset that 75% of the voters in Arkansas wanted to ban gay marriage and I may not celebrate Christmas this year in order to protest religious fundamentalist fascist ideologue assholes, even if they are in the vast majority.

HOWEVER, Kerry only lost by some 11 percentage points. We re-elected a Democratic Senator and Congressman. Maybe if a few people in the more liberal states would lose their snooty opinion, because it is snooty my friends, and maybe if they realized how much money they could save by living in, say, Oxford, Mississippi, than in New York, New York and how, particularly if you are a writer, artist-type, you can get a lot more work done and feel much better about yourself than you would surrounded by all the other douchebags trying to do the same thing in Williamsburg, maybe then we could make a political difference.

My friends. We have lost the election. We cannot lose again. The next democratic candidate will be John Edwards, and he'll be a Southerner. Will you let this dumpling of the Carolinas down again? Would you suffer his twinkly smile to falter? In the next four years we need to alter the landscape of the country:

Don't secede, don't expatriate... CARPETBAG IN 2008!