What can I say?

After 2000, I decided to be far more cautious about the election this year, and despite my optimism, there was a persistent kernel of doubt that kept me worrying about the results of a republican sweep this year.

Will Bush win? At this point it seems all but a done deal. Getting out the vote combined with voter suppression seems to have been a winning ticket in the federal elections.

The major fear was that with the judiciary on the line this year, the democrats would be able to stave off an appointment or two to the Court. This now also appears to be unlikely, especially with Rehnquist's serious problems.

At the same time, despite the irregularities in the swing states, the country appears to have given the GOP time and time again the mandate to govern. Allen points out that this is cause for some to desperately pull out their copies of Democracy in America. It has been far too long since I have pulled out those volumes (if I'm not mistaken not since high school).

Perhaps it has come time again to reevaluate the American Experiment. In most objective circles (dare I consider myself among those) it is generally acknowledged that the winners in this years races while of ideological purity were ... lacking. The Daily Show (unfortunately watched from Television last night my loyal readers) perhaps put this best in the last ten minutes of their election special, rattling off some of the more ridiculous parts of the regional platforms and rhetoric espoused by GOP candidates.

Despite the closeness in the votes in the electoral college, this was not a close election. Any election where these candidates get sixty million votes is a loss. My initial impression is that the problems with this election stem not from a failure to get out the vote, but an inherent failure in the logic behind the get out the vote drives. Voter canvassing attracts marginal voters to the cause.

We have a serious problem with the electorate en-masse. We have to face the fat that there are many Americas, and that most of us are not familiar with them, or their ideas, that we have no strategy to change their core beliefs, which were reflected in this election. To sink to the level of palliative metaphors, "You can't boil water with a blow torch, you just end up making steam."

A majority of Americans are amenable to religious demagoguery, affiliated homophobic paranoia, and a willingness to reject a global context in favor of allegiance to narrow mindedness.

If we who pride ourselves as intellectuals want to regain control of our political process, our international soft power, our pride in our nation, we will have to start from within. "Strength" and false "resolve" are not the only alternative panaceas to ignorance.

Reeducation begins at home.

Today, I live on an island.

See the problem?