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Yesterday was about dramatic statements and feeling despondent (I wore all black; it was my optimism and idealism I was mourning). I went to bed at 9PM because I just couldn't stand to hear about it anymore.

Today is about finding perspective.

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It's not even the prospect of 4 more years of Bush that sends me into a tailspin. It's the realization, which hit me like a ton of bricks, that Election 2000 wasn't a fluke. Approximately every other person who went to the polls Tuesday really DOES think that way. Is really willing to stake the future of their country [1] on a single issue: a grudge against a Vietnam vet who came back and told ugly truths. Or the question of whether or not two men should be allowed to marry each other. Or whether a stranger in the next town over should be allowed to get an abortion.

One cultural issue. All of those things are more important to the 51% of the American public than the environment, the economy, or the U.S.'s relationship with the rest of the world.

No one sees a bigger picture anymore. I actually just heard a man on NPR say that he voted for Bush because Bush had made a mess of things and that he needed to clean it up himself.

Does it not occur to this guy that Bush might not think he made a mess? The most he's ever said is that some "mistakes were made. " All in all, he thinks things are moving along nicely in Iraq, and he thinks he's done the world a great service. He's not likely to clean anything up.

These are my countrymen.

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Perspective, Ellen. Deep breaths. Make peace with it.

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My friend Carl summed up what I am feeling quite nicely:

"America is fighting two wars abroad, one of them optional by most accounts, with no exit strategy. The federal deficit is exploding at an unsustainable rate, as is the trade deficit. The economy is steadily losing jobs. Poverty is rising. Legions of terrorists continue to plot against us from abroad and taunt our inability to stop them.

And in the issue upon which voters in Ohio, and therefore the nation, apparently turned was gay marriage.

I bet the terrorists sure weren't expecting that."

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[1] It's not just the next 4 years, and it's not just foreign relations. Unless you get all of your news from your local classic rock station, you are already aware that in the next 4 years, at least 2 or 3 Supreme Court justices will have to be replaced. That alone has really far-reaching effects.