I have no blog and I must scream

"Terrible thing, to live in fear. ... All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time."
-Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding, the Shawshank Redemption

I had trouble sleeping last night. We did end up watching Shawshank Redemption, after the SOOTTAD dealt with a few hours of an unplanned work emergency. We felt pretty good after that. But almost immediately afterwards, we were caught off guard by a foreboding soundbite on the TV just as we were turning it off. And shortly thereafter, a glimpse of an electoral map on Mozilla when I went to turn off the computer pretty much sucked all the hope and positive mojo right out of us. It was already down to 3 states and looking ugly.

Executive decision: go to sleep. It would still be there in the morning. But easier said than done. The SOOTTAD was shaking; I could feel her heart racing. I laid awake, unable to turn my brain off, thinking of all the things a second Bush presidency would mean: Supreme Court appointments, skyrocketing national debt, selling off the rest of America to corporate greed, piece by piece.

Strange dreams. (This is not so unusual.)

Tonight, there was a horse race, except with cats, and with hurdles of different heights. An out-and-back race. Several of the cats look alike. As I ride mine, we seem to be doing alright, but each hurdle becomes more difficult to clear, and we've slowed down a lot. We barely make the finish, but I'm pleased to see we've taken second, which doesn't seem too bad out of a field of five or six.

I wake up around 5am. While, in the dream, taking second feels pretty good, I have an uneasy feeling that, as far too many Americans seem to see it these days, taking second means only that you didn't take first. That you didn't win. That you are a loser.

My metaphorical horse/cat didn't win.

I can't get back to sleep -- dread and hope duking it out in my head. (dread actually going to town on hope, really.) But I keep postponing the inevitable, unwilling to turn on the radio. Blustery winds gust outside -- it sounds like turmoil to me. I give in at 7:09am. The radio is unhelpful, but it sounds bad. Online, I learn that it's down to Ohio. A sliver of hope? Will John Kerry be the Red Sox in game 4 of the ALCS? How many miracles can we have this fall?

Just one, it would seem. Kerry concedes around 11am.

* * *

The SOOTTAD cried this morning. I cannot say that I did not shed tears of frustration as well. I've been feeling it too. Stressed. Anxious. Shell-shocked. Numb. A little helpless. And I needed to get it out of my system.

Back in college, we had a traditional nightly primal scream (that is, until they banned it); I didn't think it would help now.

I thought writing might help and tried to get onto Blogger, but couldn't. Couldn't get in. Help! I need to blog! [Still having issues, even now. I've already lost one version of this post.] You'd think something big just happened or something.

So today it's been just me and the SOOTTAD looking for answers. How? Why? What next? I know we need to carry on, to be strong. But we also need to rest and recover, so that we can be ready for the right-wing onslaught that's sure to come over the next few years. The SOOTTAD worries that this was the nail in the coffin of our democracy. An understandable thought, given the reports of voting irregularities you can find around the 'net. (The Diebold machines are particularly scary.)

I ended up hitting the political blogs again to find some consolation in numbers, in shared pain, sadness. It was some help (yes, you are not alone), but not much.

Four more years.

All I can think is "Four more years? Four more years of what?"

Four more years of fear. Four more years of lies, greed, intolerance. Record deficits, uncontrolled and unchecked corporate malfeasance, deconstruction of environmental protections. An energy policy apparently made solely of concessions to the energy industry (that seems to only encourage increased consumption and international dependence), the erosion of civil liberties. Four more years of placing politics ahead of science, of using discrimination and bigotry to split the electorate.

I've read that some believe we should give him another chance, to give him the opportunity to prove himself.

Sorry, I already did that 4 years ago. And again after 9/11. And from day one, I watched him walk all over that goodwill. And, as many have pointed out, this time he doesn't have to worry about reelection.

At the moment, I'm not pissed, just sad and deeply disheartened. But I'm sure that'll change soon enough.

Hope is no longer about a Kerry presidency, it's about progressives winning the hearts and minds of those who are currently blinded by the current administration's smoke and mirrors. And preventing our democracy from sliding into the abyss.