we're fucked

I was originally planning to write this entry about the 1960's which I am taking a class about and is particularly fascinating to me right now, but I find myself incapable to think about anything besides the election results. I'm in a state of complete shock...still not able to register that this is actually happening. All I feel is despair and a whole lot of anger. For other elections in the past, the results have not been what I wanted but Ive never felt the sort of urgency for change than during this presidential election and now that Bush has been elected for yet another 4 years in office, I want nothing more than to move out of the country and get as far away as possible. But really, how did this happen? Is America that obsessed with "morality" (which is basically a code for super conservative religious values like abortion and gay rights because let's face it, you can't call Kerry a person without morals unless youre pigeon-holing the definition of morals to extreme Christianity) that it can't see what's going on in the world? Just throw the "G" word at them ( god, gospel, gays, and guns ) and they forget everything that bush has done wrong the last 4 years and freak out. Now keep in mind when I say that, I'm not putting down religion in general. The thing I have a problem with is when a person or group of people have a set of beliefs that they push onto others and say "well, I believe this and therefore everyone else should follow". It's at that point when it stops being just religion but turns into intolerance and bigotry. Who cares that we invaded a country, thumbing our nose at the cooperative efforts of the United Nations as we went, with no evidence in the name of "stopping terrorism" and killed thousands of Iraqi men, women and children. Who cares if a woman's rights over her own body get stomped on and the clock gets turned back 30 years to a time when droves of women were dying from botched abortions in unsafe conditions? It happened back then and it'll happen again. Who cares if the economy sinks to its demise and we lose over thousands upon thousands of jobs...they'll still vote Bush? Who fucking cares if all the nations of this world were watching carefully to see who the American people were going to support and now that we've freely embraced Bush again, pretty much everyone in the world is going to hate us?

To me, the future is looking pretty bleak. I'm concerned about my rights as a woman and not having the rights I deserve. It saddens me that all 6 states banned the gay marriage initiative. It just hammers in how much we live in extremely intolerant times and that people feel like they have the blessing of God to regulate the lives of others. Crush them. Put them down. It's just not enough to live and let live, is it? I'm scared that Bush will be able to appoint one or more extreme rightist supreme court justices...the implications of which will permeate american policy for the next 40 years. I'm worried that this war in Iraq is not the end of the crusade and that we won't stop until we've invaded the entire middle east and brought North Korea to its knees and make our mark on history as the American Imperialist era. These are not innocent times and now that Bush is in his second term, he has no limitations for fear of being reelected. We've pretty much handed it all over on a silver platter with no restrictions and that scares the crap out me. So America, do you feel safer now? Cuz I sure as hell don't.