Tuesday was a tough night for those of us who hoped to wake up with a new American president instead of a one-way ticket to The Republic of Jesusistan. As state after state on TV network maps filled with red, despairing leftie friends IMd and SMSed to say they were hitting the cheap chardonnay — and hard. They weren't alone in the disappointment, or the drink. Me, I've been sober for more than a decade, so I drowned my sorrows in — well, tea.
True, boxed wine can be a comforting mistress. But if these aren't sobering times, I don't know what is. And I believe that now more than ever, the ability to form complete sentences is a powerful political statement.
Many BoingBoing readers put down their meds long enough in to share personal anecdotes from voting day, and the day after. Some dropped science on us. Others offered t-shirts, creative visualization, MP3 playlists and forward-thinking proposals.
Reader E. Whale says:
With all the new reports of lost or miscounted ballots, now is the time to make sure it doesn't happen again. The Open Voting Consortium is a combination of open source coding and election reform effort, and they're looking to get 111 members by 11/11. Contribute code, time, money, or whatever you can — if we start now, maybe we'll really, truly fix things for next time. Link.
Reader aacool said,
I just thought I'd let you know I was tracking Internet Load on Election Day, Nov 2, 2004 and blogging on this topic. Since this election was so closely blogged and involved many more Internet-aware voters than ever before, I felt this issue was interesting. Link.
Molly wrote in to say,
As a Texan, I'd like to repeat the words of Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks and say that I'm embarrassed to that Bush is from Texas. And yes, the country really is stupid, and that's why an incompetent criminal has been re-elected. I got a very clear picture of his base constituency when having a discussion over lunch with some co-workers about our favorite children's shows. I was commenting on how much I liked Sesame Street, and one woman (a very vocal Christian conservative) said, "Oooh.. Sesame Street is too tolerant for me". To my horror, several other women nodded their heads in agreement. I guess I didn't even think there was such a thing as too tolerant.
Responding to this, reader Jim Moskowitz says:
I was startled at that email you quoted from "Molly" about a conversation where several people agreed that Sesame Street was 'too tolerant', and I went looking for evidence that that phrase is a propagating meme. Yep, it is. Here's a brief interview about it from earlier this year, on [evangelical Christian network CBN News]: Link to A Christian Author's Push for Radical Intolerance. Warning: contains unsettling ideas and the what-is-he-insinuating sentence "I don't want you to go and shoot people with both barrels of Christianity."
William Gibson blogs today:
My friend Steve Brown reports that the most popular new t-shirt at his local liberal arts college says "I'LL BET YOU VOTE *NEXT* TIME, HIPPY!" Second terms, historically, are not cakewalks. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power, this very moment, is patiently eroding the membranes containing the coming year's inevitable debacles and scandals. Unless you don't believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely, how can that be otherwise? Peace.
(Special thanks to everyone who wrote in, including those of you whose political opinions differ. Thanks for the links, Blamanj, Mikelite, Chris Brown, Jeff Warren, Jon West, Fingers, and Shea. )
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