The People Ain’t Stopped Pumpin’ Yet
By Greg Moses
The blue state, red state game is another one-dimensional propaganda stunt. I live in a red state, and the first thing I heard at the bus stop Wednesday morning was, “stupid Republicans!”
A friend and fellow bus rider reports that she heard two former soldiers asking themselves if they didn’t need a militia now, “to protect us from our own government.”
In the signs outside also, my friend saw folk protest brewing: “The bus passed a large spray painted message on a wall: ‘MEET THE DECLINE.’ At a stop on the East side there was a nice poster taped to the bus shelter: ‘VOTE AND BE COUNTED,’ but someone had written ‘Ballot box, Vote here’ on the trash can nearby.”
Was it just my mood that day, or did I actually see it reflected in the steely eyes of fellow travelers? If you were on the bus Wednesday, you were definitely off the bandwagon.
“My Mother got angry with me, because I said I wasn’t going to leave the country,” explained one kid to his friend. It’s like, “what do you mean you’re not leaving!”
These red state voters were behaving like New Yorkers: bewildered, incredulous, and pissed. Asking, “who are these people who think Bush is anything but a warmongering demagogue?” Moral values?! You have got to be brain dead!
A correspondent from India tells me via email that he reads about 56 million people who voted against Bush, but he doesn’t care about them anymore. And his rejection is not much different from many American intellectuals who pass over 56 million voters as if they were nothing but losers, or what’s worse in their eyes, Democrats.
But now that Kerry is no longer distracting us, perhaps we can turn some attention to those 56 million.
“How you doin’ today?” asks the cashier, as she talks about the beautiful weather we’re having on Friday. “But watch out for those drivers out there,” she grins. “They think they know where they’re going, but they really don’t.”
56 million people aren’t about to stop pumping their lives back into the body of this nation. When I look at the sky covering my state today, it don’t look red to me.
[56 million figure corrected fri. pm]
[for an interesting graphic re-visioning of the vote see http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/%5D
MoPress 
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