THE DARK ELECTION SECRET

So 1% of all Americans put Bush over the top! Or 2% of all those who voted. Not very many and certainly not a mandate, but if Bush acted as he did when he did not have a plurality of the vote in his first appointment, don’t expect him to be cautious or to care about anybody but his Christian base in his elected term in office.

I’ve heard intelligent Democrats speak wistfully about how Bush will attempt to make his legacy in his lame duck term and so act with restraint to win over some of his opposition in Congress. Sometimes, intellectuals amaze me, being as smart as they are, with their not seeing how wishful that thinking is.

Bush is going to kick butt and take names. He’s going to have a legacy all right in taking America back a century into the past and restoring the power of the wealthy all over this land. He’s going to undermine the legal protections of the minorities in America. His base more or less have spoken, and they don’t give a damn about the economic situation in America, nor in economic justice. They just want their morality imposed on the rest of us.

And their supposed morality is the point that really sticks about this election. I know that the largest proportion of Bush supporters voted with upright and fair reasons for the President, but that his evangelical base, which carried him over the threshold to victory, voted from bigotry and prejudice against the gay minority in America. But I have hope for the future.

Bigotry and prejudice are not the American way, nor is the excluding of any citizen from full participation in the democratic system. Eventually, just as blacks were admitted fully into American society so will the gay community be admitted. Bigotry and prejudice eventually are seen for what they are—the misguided moral attempts by one group in America to exclude another group from full participation in American freedoms. Good Christians will see this injustice, and they won’t let their fundamentalist brethren distort the Christian name. Patience, my gay friends, Americans will come around. They know that an America which excludes anyone from freedom is an America in decline.
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"A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support." —Ambrose Bierce