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Okay, I have a moment so I thought I would say a few things on the election. But after a month of sitting on it, I've cooled my rhetoric a little.

As some background, I have been a Republican since I registered to vote at 18. I am changing my party affiliation. I'm not sure if I'm switching Democratic or going independent. Jury's still out on that.

I am very disappointed with Bush's win. I disagree with all of his social policies. I see him as using religion as a political weapon. I see his unilateralism as dangerous. I see him as a generally unintelligent person who surrounds himself with manipulators.

That said, however, none of his personal abilities really matters. The truth is, one President doesn't do squat. Had Gore won in 2000, we still would have been attacked on September 11. He still would have done much of the same things that Bush did. He would have angered a lot of people, and made a lot of people happy. This happens with every Presidency. They will make policies, these policies will get overturned in future administrations. A single Presidency DOES NOT MATTER. Four years later, there will be a chance to change the policies of the current administration.

HOWEVER, there is ONE way in which a Presidency can affect a generation, and that is the Supreme court. If the President sticks a judge in there who thinks way on one side of the political spectrum and he gets approved by Congress, this person will remain on the court with essentially ultimate power over the laws of this country until the icy grip of death.

For those who have been living in a closet their whole lives, we currently have a system set up of three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. There are checks and balances set up to prevent any one branch of government from having too much power. The Executive branch can veto any law that the Legislative branch puts in, and can nominate judicial candidates. The Judicial branch can overturn laws as unconstitutional, and can remove the President from office should he be impeached and convicted of crimes. The Legislative branch can overturn a veto from the President with sufficient numbers and must approve of any judicial candidate.

However, with the overwhelming win of the Republican party in this election, the power is shifting entirely to one side. Frankly, this scares me. I'm a big fan of the checks and balances. FORTUNATELY, the republicans still have less than 60 seats in the Senate, which is the minimum required to break a filibuster. So there is still ONE preventative measure against Bush putting a whacko uber-religious conservative or three in the Supreme Court. But I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the situation, given that the Democratic party seems to be pretty incompetent.

Lately I have been extremely frightened with the apparent mental state of the country. I feel that bigotry, greed, selfishness, and what I will call forced morality are running rampant. I will address religion and prejudice in the next blog entry, but I am getting off-topic.

The stated aim of the Republican party is to overturn Roe vs. Wade. They want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Republicans use religion to control thought and gather votes. Religion is a powerful Pandora's box... Once the box is opened, you can't control what has been released. I feel that the Republicans might not exactly WANT a Christian Nation, but if getting one ensures that they have power over the country, well, then that seems to be a great option.

The election result scares me. The social movement in this country scares me. The Republican party scares me. Life scares me now. I feel that our social freedoms are being restricted. And the country seems to be okay with this. Living in California now, I am around a lot of people who feel the same way. But geographically, the vast majority of the country does NOT feel that way. Popularly (at least among people who voted), the majority of the country does NOT feel that way. What age are we living in?

Along those lines, I believe the average American has the intelligence of a walnut. They eat what they are fed from Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. They don't think for themselves, they are not informed, and they are controlled by the more intelligent people around them. There are obviously multiple sides to any issue, but most people just feel how people tell them to. Thinking takes too much work. How many people actually read the text of the laws they were voting on? Okay, too much. How about the independent analysis of the laws? Those were only a page or two? No? Arguments for/against and their rebuttals? No? The cards that the Republican and Democratic parties sent out telling you how to vote? Maybe? Uhhhh...TV ads? Ah, there it is. Intelligence is a commodity and we have a massive deficit in this country. And the deficit is deepening.

I am not against Bush the person. I am not against Bush the President. I am against the Bush movement. I am against the push to dupe the country. I am against the push to restrict freedoms. I am against the mockery that is being made of morality. I am against deceptive politics, bigotry, and hatred.

Unfortunately, I'm in the minority.