fine whine

I'd like to share a little story with you.

Earlier today something happened that made a lot of people unhappy. One man made a phone call.

Known only as "ekote", the (bargain site) Fatwallet member called Viking office supplies to modify his recent order, twenty five dollars and change of pens and envelopes and a free DVD player. The representative he called told him that the player (a $79.99 value) was meant for a specific promotion with printers and his order wasn't valid for it. Within minutes the DVD player seemed to disappear from the Viking site and also ordering functions seemed to work, well, less well.

Meanwhile, on Fatwallet, ekote was flamed, slandered, called an idiot and other derogatory names sometimes even in CAPITAL LETTERS. Other FW members who hadn't yet hit the order button were angry, and soon it seemed that everybody was chiming in on the anti-ekote bandwagon. These people were apparently enraged, to the point of capital letters and boldface type, that somebody had called attention to a pricing mistake, and they didn't get in on a cheap DVD player. Well, boo hoo. As if there aren't more important things to worry about this morning than a DVD player that they shouldn't have been able to get anyway.

It's not like there won't be several $25 dollar DVD players on sale this coming Black Friday.

They're not the only ones whining this morning, though. There seem to be a great many people utterly shell-shocked that Bush so far has received more votes than Kerry. How, they ask incredulously, could this be? Surely nobody could be so stupid or close-minded, let alone so many people! Kerry apparently conceded earlier today, so it would seem that the election is over and we have four more years to endure.

Before I continue, please don't get all offended at me too much. This is a rant that started bouncing around my mind last night as I read postings and articles written as the results were being tallied. The people to whom I aim these sharp-tongued remarks are the knee-jerk whiners, finger pointers, and elitists that I saw on the boards, not anybody I know or would hope to meet in person.

Much like the angry Fatwallet members mentioned above.

So...

Bush won. More people voted for him. Yes, there were record numbers of voters. Yes, there were record numbers of new voters. Not all of the new voters were voting for Kerry!

A lot of hullabaloo was made of the polling results of all the different pollsters and issues of cell phones and so on and so forth. Punditry on both sides abounded and I'm sure that the Pro-Bush pundits are sitting back victoriously and the more adamant Pro-Kerry pundits are still in shock (some had predicted as much as 2/3 the vote for Kerry or more).

Well you know what? Polls don't count and punditry doesn't solve much other than satisfy the desires of those who like to hear or read the pundits pund (or whatever verb they do). The only thing that counts in an election is a vote.

Thank you to all the voters on both sides. Though some of you faced adversity you still stuck to it and voted, even if a great many of you voted for people and issues that I do not like. Some numbers show some hundred and fifteen million voters this time around, over half of which weren't interested in changing horses mid stream. Thanks, but...

Shame on you all.

Shame on you complacent voters willing to buckle under for four more years of bad stuff. Shame on you for giving the man who reversed our nation's financial standing a mandate to keep up the good work. Shame on you for falling for scare tactics and selective interpretation of an ancient text.

Shame on you voters who weren't complacent. You were mad as hell and you weren't going to take it anymore! Except that when you were telling people this you were talking to the wrong people. As more polls rolled in too many people were patting each other on the back or calling already-harassed voters in Ohio and Florida and not doing all you could to get the voters to see the way.

Shame on you for giving up on Oklahoma, and Kentucky, and the Dakotas, and wherever else was Red or Blue or Purple or whatever. As you can see, nothing was set in stone this time around. Just because the candidates and the pundits wrote off the states doesn't mean you should have.

Of course, I didn't call any Oklahomans either. I bet neither did P. Diddy or Mary J. Blige, each of whom left me more than one (pre-recorded) message. All in all I probably had some thirty phone calls in the last few months encouraging me to get out and vote.

That's probably more than for the entire state of Montana.

Guess what? I don't even like the guy I voted for all that much, because in truth I didn't even vote for him. I voted against the other guy (and his largely irrelevant other opponents like the Libertarian Badnarik). Every time I've voted in a presidential race it has been against somebody and not for the other. So shame on me, too, I guess, for not supporting "my guy" as best I could.

Well, shame on them too, for giving me two pretty similar people to pick between. Shame on the system for not letting me vote Green or Libertarian or for the Robot Labor party if I wanted to do so. Shame on everybody who narrowed this election to a matter of fear of terror (boy, don't you feel safe out there in Nebraska now?) or protection of marriage.

Protection of marriage? What needs to be protected? My mom the schoolteacher has some twenty five students and she's having more than thirty parent-teacher conferences on their behalf. You see, they're not seeing the separated/estranged mothers and fathers together since some of them cannot be civil even for something like this. Others even have restraining orders to keep them apart.

This is what you have protected, America. Good job. While our civil rights have diminished and our jobs dried up and our billionaires have gotten richer, you've protected marriage. Whoop de doo. When the Supreme Court gets packed with people who think just like you, it's just a matter of time before the Puritans' visions for this country finally come to fruition (maybe. God I hope not).

Again, I'm sorry if this offends anybody I know personally, but I stand behind what I say. To all you whiners, there's a whole world out there that isn't in front of your computer screens. These Bush voters weren't plotting their mass voting on the internet, or on MSNBC. They weren't having meetups and flash mobs and dissecting fonts of documents. They were spreading the onus to vote at dinner tables and at meetings in person, often even in churches and town halls.

Hell, a lot of these people were the ones renting out theaters to show congregations The Passion. I don't recall ever getting an evite for that, do you?

To you, those hardcore Bush voters strong on the hot-button issues, good luck. You've got an awful lot of people mad at you, and they think they're smarter than you too. Be cool, and maybe we can all work together and get along the same way everybody did standing in line together.

So yeah, the country's backsliding and we're probably not going to be looked fondly upon by the world community for another four years. Here's hoping Bush can't do too much more damage that the next guy can't fix.

Or gal, for that matter. As long as that gal isn't Hillary.

Four more years. Four more years, folks, is how long you have to come up with a better, newer candidate. He or she won't be running against Bush (and likely not Cheney either) but it could be tough to get rid of all residue of Republicanism from the White House without a damn strong alternative.

So Ralph Nader, start working. You've got four whole years to campaign now, ha ha ha .

Go ahead a laugh now. Don't be surprised when things seem a lot more grim.