COLUMN: After-election feelins are in full swing
The week after the election is so grim. The words “four more years” are used as both a cheer and an expletive. Bitter losers and boastful winners refuse to remove their campaign lawn signs until they biodegrade like a jack-o’-lantern in March. Thoughts turn to Canada for some.
It’s a simple sorrow to walk down the streets and see the lifeless bodies of liberals who have given up will to live being scooped up with forklifts and stacked like cord wood as their Frisbees go un-thrown and their black labs and border collies howl a mournful lament. Those left living blast the Doors song “This is the End” from their Subaru wagons and VW vans where once only Grateful Dead and Phish tunes wafted playfully across the tie-dye seat covers. There are bumper stickers to be scraped off and new causes to be found.
There is no joy in Libville, mighty Kerry has struck out. He’s quite a debater, but as he found out later, that don’t mean squat.
In other parts of town, Republicans dance by the light of the burning piles of Fahrenheit 9/11 tapes and DVDs. They cruise Main Street in their mighty trucks; their towed snowmobiles and gun racks glistening in the evening’s last sunlight as the sun sets on another election year. They sleep sound; finally safe from gangrenous gay marriage threat and wilderness encroaching on our urban areas. They dream of Crawford, Texas, and a simple man named George.
On Bush! On Cheney! On Blitzer! and Karl Rove! They pushed all the real issues to the back of the stove.
Sure these are hyperboles for the sake of a cheap laugh, but like all stereotypes, they contain more than a few grains of truth. They also demonstrate just how divided we are. We may not be not as far apart as Muslims and the Western world, but the crevasse is getting wider and deeper. The popular vote came down to 48 percent for Kerry and 51 percent for Bush leaving less than 1 percent for all the rest of the leftists, despots and write-in whackos. I’d like to think that is explained by the mathematical truism that half the country is above average and they other half is below average, but I’m not sure which half is which.
The real statistical improbability is that I don’t really have any friends (but maybe some family) who voted for George W. Bush. I don’t really remember anyone who voted for Reagan or George W’s daddy. I haven’t watched a TV program or listened to radio program that was pro Bush. When George does start talking on the radio I mentally tune it out and dismiss it faster than my parents’ first talks about sex.
Most likely the 51 percent voting majority feels the same about me, my friends and my entertainment choices. Some of these people are even members of your family, but you are still somehow able to eat turkey with them once a year.
Make a change this year. Invite a liberal to lunch or invite a Republican to rally for peace. You’ve got four more years to make a change.
Dennis Hinkamp can be reached at dennish@ext.usu.edu.