Friday, November 05, 2004

Blue State Blues: I voted for Bush, but as I've said, I'm sure Kerry would have made a fine president. However, it still amazes me how much both sides vilify the other. Some people really believe four more years of Bush means the end of the world.

Centerfield has found a couple NYT articles featuring lefties on the Blue Coasts venting and crying about impending Armageddon. Here are a few quotables:

"I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country -- the heartland," Dr. Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country -- in the heartland."

"New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us," he said.

His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say."

[and on the West side]

"I am prepared to keep my head down, possibly for the rest of my life, under a totalitarian regime," Mr. Conklin said.

[...]

"It just made me cry," Terry Mitchell, 54, an audiologist in Oakland, said of Mr. Bush's re-election. "I am sad that America is asleep at the wheel."

[...]

"I am depressed, but I am also just really angry at the rest of the country's ignorance," Ms. Sloan said.

Even newspaper columnists describe Bush's victory as "a jihad in America" and compare Christians in this country to Al Qaeda. Instapundit has pictures of San Francisco protesters with signs such as, "I'm ashamed to be an American". I guess that makes sense, because America is ashamed of people like him as well.

I have to admit, if that's the way some of these people really think, then their misery brings a smile to my face.

I do know that these are just the extreme cases, and that the Right has more than their fair share of extremists as well. I'd like to think that this election will be a wake-up call that hate has no place in politics, that it only leads to defeat. But I'm not so confident about that just yet.

Update: Who are these people? And why are they given a forum to preach their hate?