60,608,582 votes
So on November 3rd, when I heard that Kerry conceded and we now had another four years of W. I was pretty depressed. Since this isn't a website devoted to political discussion, I decided to keep my disgust and disillusion brief and simply posted the above latest vote count for Bush and (what I thought was) quite a witty quote by William Shakespeare that a friend had sent me via electronic mail. After about a week, I did a little research to find out which play the quote came from, only to find out that the quote was a hoax, that is, it wasn't written by the Bard. Apparently, according to sources I Googled, it was totally made up, and popularly featured in many a discussion, post-September 11th. It was at this point, I decided to just delete the post.

But after a couple of days I realized I couldn't just say nothing. 60,608,582 people possibly voted for George W. Bush! I didn't! My county in NY, Suffolk, DID. Since I work in Suffolk County and deal with the general public everyday, I am reminded on a daily basis with how little I have in common with my fellow citizens. We are on totally different wavelengths. The election results just further depressed me, my sense of disillusion, and indifference. Republicans do not represent me. George W. Bush and the White House do not represent me. The Senate does not represent me. The House of Representatives does not represent me (irony anyone?).

My country does not represent me, and I do not approve of its actions in the world. Often I wonder if maybe I am in the right country. I don't believe that just because you are born somewhere, that it is necessarily the place you are meant to spend your whole life. But before I excommunicate myself and condemn the USA, I should probably make sure that I am doing everything I can to take part in our country's 'democratic process', besides just showing up at the polls every four years.

On November 2nd, I signed up to join the Democratic Party. In the next four years I want to get involved and make some changes. I am optimistic, despite the fact that i don't have the slightest clue how I am going to go about this, when I don't feel like I have anything in common with anyone in my local community.

Yesterday, I found this article, Liam Scheff's "My Formal Adieu to the Democratic Party". Not exactly the optimism I was looking for, but I thought it summed up my post-Election Day feelings very well. Not to mention, it says a lot of things that need saying.