Today I'm depressed. I'm depressed about the state of our great nation. There are still more ballots to be counted in Ohio and the results are still officially up in the air, but it appears that we likely know what the result will be. We are America and we have a problem, a problem called George W. Bush.
Now we are staggering, senseless, around the world stage haplessly destroying other parts of the world. We have alienated most of our friends and we are on a path to self destruction. It looked like perhaps we would have a moment of clarity, but it seems we are not ready yet. We are still full of too much anger and fear. We are unable to face the truth about the situation. We are unable to admit we have made mistakes. We are stubborn and unwilling to change our ways. It seems, like so many people in their lives, we must engage in more self destruction before we can realize how bad things are and how much we need a change.
A lot of people have said they want to leave this country if Bush wins. They can no longer stand the madness. It's true, I can't stand the madness that our country is going through. Sometimes it makes me want to scream, and sometimes it makes me want to leave. But sometimes when you love someone, even if they are being a jerk, destroying themselves, and hurting you, you just can't leave them. So no, I won't be leaving the USA. I will sit and hope that one day we will come to our senses, one day we will realize what we are doing to ourselves and finally be ready for a change. As it seems we have learned yesterday and many have learned in the past by hard experience, you can't force that change no matter how obviously it is needed. The madness must run its course and only then can we try to make it better. Until then all we can do is work to make the facts as obvious as possible and wait for people to pay attention.
So now I sit in despair, but I hold out hope: I hope that one day soon we will give up on hatred and embrace love, give up fear and embrace courage, give up on ignorance and embrace enlightenment. Our country has made a turn around many times in the past. It did so after the Civil War and the Great Depression, and we can do it now. We have had many dark periods in out country, but we have always come to our senses and continued to progress toward a more free, a more equal, a more perfect union, and I have faith that this period of madness will end and we will continue that progression.
As I said, right now we as a nation are unwilling to face facts. The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that Bush supporters were overwhelmingly misinformed about the situation in Iraq. Most are misinformed about the findings regarding WMD in Iraq, the connection between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda, and about what world opinion is on this matter. These are not subjective issues of belief, they are misinformed about the hard facts. I can only hope that many of the people who voted to continue down the dark path we are traveling did so only out of ignorance, because ignorance can be remedied. We had wonderful voter turnout yesterday, which is the first ingredient of a healthy democracy. First people must vote. We have achieved that. Now the electorate must be informed, so we must work on that. If we can achieve both, then we as a nation have a bright future.