We're immense numbers--really, we are! Guys? Where are you going?

(I wrote this the day after the election. Ignore the date you see above. It's the liberal media's attempt to paint me as someone too goddamn lazy to do something he'd been meaning to get around to for week, and this blogger won't stand for that. Down with Dan Rather!) (I now see that I can edit the date and time of the post, and am put in the awkward position of deciding whether to change the date and time or keep the above paragraph, which is halfway witty.) (Fuck it. Roll the quote!) "President: The leading figure in a small group of men of whom -- and of whom only -- it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President." --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary I sat in front of the television last night, as my friends good-naturedly drank whiskey. We had popped champagne for Pennsylvania, but by the time that only CNN was holding out hope for Ohio (FOX News had called Ohio for Bush in early 2002) they had correctly divined that nothing sums up anger and despair quite like a plastic cup full of Jack Daniels. But I couldn't join them in drinking in the face of four more years of grinning simian leadership. It was too goddamned depressing. I wanted to cry. By the time I woke up this morning, Kerry had called Bush to concede. The hope that had packed up its bags and put them by the door the night before had caught the katy--yet, somehow, I still had to shower and go to work. It turns out that morning traffic is just the same now that the progressive cause is picking its jaw up off the floor with a car jack. Staring down the barrel of small-minded, greedy, soulless war profiteering had remarkably little effect on the way my lunch tasted. Marvin Gaye makes you want to get it on with me as much as he every did now that the nation has chosen the playground bully over the student council president. Frankly, George W. Bush's reelection is going to have little to no effect on my life. My tax bracket isn't too terribly affected by his ill-conceived cuts and I'm not very likely to get drafted to fight his horrid vendetta of a war. I'm not planning to marry a dude; I don't think I'll need an abortion. He is undoubtedly creating more terrorists with his big-swinging-dick foreign policy, but the likelihood of my getting attacked is practically nil. The world may be collapsing around me, but my life will remain largely the same. So why am I so depressed, so pissed, so ashamed? It's because like it or not, the president is America's symbol, our proxy. He's the image our country projects to the rest of world (along with Coke, Britney Spears and the business end of a large rifle.) He's the face our country sees when it looks in the mirror in the morning (which I think is why our country has such a problem getting out of bed, is veering not-slowly towards a Xanax problem and seems to take 30-minute showers and arrives at work looking like it's been crying.) I'll say it: George W. Bush represents me. And boy do I hate that. And so I want to say to my neighbors and to the world and to the historians who might someday salvage a hard drive with this on it (Hope you like Supertramp mp3s, boys!): I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry on behalf on my fellow Americans who voted their fears. I'm sorry that we are a people who are easily deceived. I'm sorry for all the smirking and swaggering and making-everyone-else-feel-small that's going to emanate from the White House. Please remember that damn near half of Americans didn't want it to be this way. I think that watching the American election from abroad must have felt like seeing a friend struggling with a serious mental illness. You know that your friend is capable of wonderful things, but this thing that he's been struggling with has been causing him to do things that hurt you deeply. You're watching him fight, seeing the internal commotion and pain that the deep divisions in his psyche are causing--and you can only pray that he wins the fight. He hasn't lost yet, but the infinite number of flesh-hungry panda bears are putting up a strong fight. PS Hey, check out this cool link I found. They quite literally claim to be the biggest thing since Jesus.