Tuesday, November 09, 2004

There are reports (here and here) that voting irregularities occurred in a manner that gave Bush the election. I, sadly, can believe it. If the Bush administration had a track record of honesty and integrity, I would be inclined to believe that my own government were incapable of such things. But men are infallible, and in this case, Bush and his men are deliberately focused on retaining power even if it means morally impermissible decisions. So here we are, with a president who may have - again - come to power illegitimately. We are horrified because our understanding of the USA is of moral leadership. We have a pristine image of ourselves. Now, we are faced with the possibility of naked abandonment of our moral and democratic principles. We are no different than the flawed regimes outside of our country that we have witnessed before in disbelief. We are small; our leaders are inflated. We live in a first-world economy with third-world leadership. It is not the end of the world. It is the end of our paradise illusion. We are foreigners here, and we should know it.