[Harry]

I'm entirely anti Bush, as many of you know, and I was honestly horrified by the results of the elections, which I still can't fully understand. I completely agree with what Faile, Mena, Panuru, RedPyramidhead said in this thread, and I feel I could add little more to what you all already said so well, warmly, and clearly.

I would just like to give my two cents about "voting and not voting" - I think that voting is always important, not only when you are in a "big factor" state, like Mena said. Yes, you can dislike both Bush (yeah, the man seems as smart as a watermelon) and Kerry (yeah, the man is as fascinating as a cold zucchini), you may hate all candidates, but they still represent something that goes well beyond their single and yes, maybe unappealing person.

To make it clear. According to statistics, the majority of Americans is against the way Bush conducted the war in Iraq; the majority of Americans don't think that Bush is smarter than Kerry. Yet, they voted again for him. To be more precise – for the first time in a long, long time, hordes of people moved their asses to go and save their President in charge from the Democratic danger. Why? Because they voted for the moral and the ideas he and his party represent – you know, they are against abortion (but they are in favor of death penalty, the latest late-term abortion), against gay marriages, they want war against war, they want and need to take revenge against someone, they believe that brute force is the best way to stop the invaders (terrorists, foreign cultures, foreign industries, crime), they portray the values of the protestant church (I bet Jesus cried in joy when G.W.Bush said that the Lord himself was with him when he decided to attack Iraq), they have their own idea of “Welfare”, they have their own idea of tax reductions and so on. Regardless of what some may say, voting for Republicans or Democrats DOES make a difference, and can get to IMMEDIATE, CONCRETE, different effects. U.S. history proved also that each president, even those who “just” followed the policy of their predecessor, was entirely different from all those who preceded him. So I can’t see how one could say that if Kerry had won the elections that would have made no difference.

Kerry represented Democrats, and Democrats had a clear program that anybody who does care about the millions of silent people that live below the conditions of middle classes should at least take into consideration. For a poor, the Democrats’ program should be the obvious choice, a no-brainer, but we also know that poorest people are often also the ones who have less class consciousness. The blue blood Kerry isn’t Clinton, but Black people (that I pray will become the hearth of the Democratic party) voted for him – because Republicans’ policy towards ethnic minorities has been disgusting, because Democrats could have created in the next four years a better welfare system to protect the interests of the poorest, but also simply because Democrats portray better their idea of Nation.

It’s true: if you are lucky enough to fall into the middle class, voting for Bush or Kerry would have made little practical difference (but I have some doubts also about it) to you or your family; but if you are a single mother (black, white, yellow, red) who lives with a work that pays $5 per hour, the fact Bush will cut even further expenses on public libraries, on education, on the welfare system will have the merry effect of forcing you to find a damn way to buy the books your boy needs to go to school (because the government will not pay for them), to pay for the medical assistance he will surely need (because you must forget completely medical assistance for yourself), and so on. Not to mention that the lack of funds to public schools leads also to those amazing, disgusting, vomit-inducing horrible things like advertising on text books, or like Coca Cola or Pepsi sponsoring the school where your son goes (I can’t believe this is actually possible), or complete lack of control on out of classroom activities. So your son will grow up believing that human body is made by 90% of Coca Cola (Diet Coke, if he’s lucky), that seeing Napoleon Bonaparte next to the new McDonalds’ Happy Meal is normal (in the hope his teacher will have the time to speak about Napoleon even if the school was closed for a month because that hydraulic system that worked so nicely in the early ‘30s exploded during the cold winter), that god (wait, what is god?) must have fucking forgotten him if he gave him a degenerate mother that is never there. And if you, this degenerate mother, are so unlucky (or degenerate) to find a new boyfriend, and you know how it happens, you are just 20 years old, you fall in love an do all those things that people who love each other do everywhere in the world, and you used all precautions, but hey, god knows how but you now have another new life, a seed growing inside your womb, and your life is so fucked up you don’t have any way to even take into consideration the possibility to sustain also this soon-to-be child, and you live in a next future where G.W.’s nominated justices have overturned the Roe vs Wade decision of the Supreme Court, well, if you find yourself in this amazing, exciting, deadly mix of unlucky coincidences that prove that, as you suspected, god doesn’t exist or is dead or is not listening, your only choice may be that back alley abortion place, where an ex stinky butcher likes to do the merciful job that your government doesn’t want to do in exchange of a few hundreds of dollars, or of something else.

I’m sorry if this sounds confusing, but it expresses my thoughts better than a well-written and ordinate post. To sum it up – regardless of whom you vote for, voting is ALWAYS important, the vote of a single person DO always make the difference, and I’m fucking scared of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Chuck Norris, but never as scared as the aforementioned single mother – or anybody having relatives living in Pakistan or nearby countries - should be.