I've marked my Sample Ballot. I'm ready for Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m.
Overtly, I say little about politics, but covertly I have strong feelings.
We are a divided nation---nearly equally divided, which makes it particularly and potentially very difficult to reconcile. The divide has grown since the 70s. This election with its issues and candidates has clarified the positions of both sides. This is the first time the differences are so clearly distinguishable and so loudly stated.
The Divide
(In the following quote "Middle America" is defined as the conservative, rural and suburban America--it is more than the fanatic Religious Right. "Edge America" is defined as the more "intellectual", liberal, and urban America of the edges)
These are two Americas, with much still in common, but more and more not in common. Middle America remains frankly and overwhelmingly Christian; "Edge America" has lost its faith. Or rather, since humans cannot live without faith in something, Edge America has transferred its faith to hopes and ideals of worldly comfort. And whereas Middle America continues, in the main, to be self-reliant, and counsel self-reliance, Edge America turns to government to manage the problems of post-modern, urban, secular life.
Middle America believes the moral verities do not change; Edge America believes they evolve, and what was true yesterday can't be true tomorrow. It is allergic to moral certainties; it associates these with stupidity. And yet it has a kind of absolute and uncritical faith in its own moral relativism.
There are urban forms of conservatism, rural forms of liberalism, but for a long time the U.S. has been developing not one but two "mainstreams". And the contrast is now stark, exposed in the crisis that arrived on Sept. 11th, 2001, when the two Americas came simultaneously under attack.
The above is from David Warren at the Ottawa Citizen
Not much in the mood for Halloween, but for those who are. . .Happy Halloween
11:23:36 AM 
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