Election Reaction

If I read one more "time to secede" article or hear one more pundit prattling on about red and blue states, I may just cash in my Irish citizenship and get the hell out of here.

I live in the bluest of blue states; Kerry got over 60% of the vote. He won the majority of votes in 18 states. The electoral college renders them all a pretty, uniform color on the "we're too dumb for data" maps the networks, papers, and websites use to report results.

But Massachusetts is the ONLY state where Kerry won over 60% of the vote.

In other words, the facts don't support any extreme geographic chauvinism. The states may be blue but reality is getting a whitewash.

Consider this: 25 million people in blue states - the states where all the smarter-than-thou separate Americas drivel originates - voted for Bush. That's 48%!

So everyone who wants to secede, just try it. Your first task is to line up all the voters you know and tell every other one of them, give or take a handful every few hundred, to leave. While you're at it, make a trailer park joke. Hum a few bars from Deliverance.

Above all, be sure to fill your expulsion speech with statements of intolerance so there's no mistaking your inability to accept different opinions (unless of course those opinions are on the handy list of alternate viewpoints you embrace as proof of your open-mindedness).

There's no need to worry about where your ostracized neighbors will go. If division and intolerance are our new universal values, the red states will kick out the Kerry-supporters, all 26 million of them, and the political refugees from red and blue can just house-swap.

Then we can all live happily in the land of the just like me and home of the rage.

Divided country my ass. We had a choice of two candidates. Neither inspired me. They took different stances on every single issue, sometimes just for the sake of differentiation and without consideration for whether the other guy had a good idea. So the moderates held their breath, flipped a coin, and pulled the lever, hoping that the people of this country can be bigger than the politicians who lead us. The secessionists make me wonder if even that simple hope is misplaced. Bastards.

Thanks. I feel better now.