Still speechless.

I'm surprised some of my friends have been able to muster words of sadness, anger and/or frustration over email. I haven't been able to do so.

I'm still shocked. Pained. I spent all of Election day in the West Virginia panhandle,waving signs and feeling confident and optimistic about the future. Every (rare)time someone slowed down and yelled "baby killer" or "anti-american" I simply smiled and told myself "that is why I'm defending democracy".

Now I'm making the emotional adjustment I need to move forward with my long-established plan of moving. Sounds like a harsh thing, to scamper when the ship seems to be sinking. But I just don't see how I can continue to live in a country that will be divided ideologically with no reconciliation in sight, where the dominant tone is being set by people who prefer comfortable fallacies than any semblance of evaluation of facts, evidence or history, where a group of people who are only interested in creating a better society for all are treated as apologists for murderers and killers, and where cognitive dissonance is so rampant that Bush is described as a "people's man" and Kerry, Gore or Clinton are described as silver spooners.

I can't muster the optimism that Iggy seems to have, or the frustration that Chaeny seems to articulate. I can only seem to focus on the fact that 80 percent of voters

in 11 states believe that my having a relationship worthy of recognition is so abominable as to be prohibited by a constitution; on the fact that slightly more than half of the people in this country, living in the poorest states, seem to believe that an administration of fundamentalists is going to improve their lives as they dole out the largesse of cushy contracts to cronies; on the fact that fear, fundamentalism and xenophobia have more power than education and conciliation.

I can't see myself growing old in a country where the supreme court for the next

30 years will have been appointed and confirmed by a congress of rabid right wingers;

where health care will continue to be a privilege for the few; where education

will continue to be controlled by people who don't care about education but about

indoctrination. I just can't. The stage is set for what may be an ugly life here

for more than four years and I'm not sure I want to be a part of it. I just don't

know.