The Election

My husband is flipping between the channels. We're watching the slick, whirling graphics blending reds and blues into swirling numbers and graphs, while putty-faced, powdered men in suits make projections, provide 'analysis,' and chuckle at their own witticisms. The cameras are particularly zoomy. And the count is very close. Too close.

This country scares me. Ever since Bush was elected, I've been terrified by our gradual slide toward absolute idiocy. His ascendency didn't start it, but it sure threw our power situation into a stark relief, a shadow on the wall with contours easy to read, the shape of debacle, the shade of lies and untruths by which we now live.

It's been a strange, unwieldy day, most of it not fit for public consumption. The darkness of November clamps down quickly in the evenings. I'm glad I don't live in the country anymore.

I am not a Democrat anymore. When I was 17 I was - and proud of it, even though I was the only such thing at my high school, and constantly made fun of by my government teacher for being a Clinton-supporter. Later, her son, the class valedictorian, ran off to Texas to perform nude in a stage play. Ha ha.

Some might say it doesn't matter who gets elected. Power corrupts no matter who it is being corrupted. But I think it does matter. Sometimes individuals matter, not as demographic groups or political bodies, but as thinking beings who make small choices that, like the butterfly, set a skirmish going in the wind of a distant country.