I feel like a foreigner in my own country nowadays...

For the past four years, I have felt a gamut of emotions -- rage, hopelessness, despair, encouragement, and too many more to list them all here. My faith in our system was shaken, stretched to the breaking point at times, but I still felt that the 2004 election would be a correction to the fraud and abuse of power that had begun on Dec. 12, 2000.

Waking up on Nov. 3 and finding out that Bush had actually received the majority of the popular vote, and would actually be ELECTED this time, dashed that feeling.

Now, I feel like a foreigner in my own country. I feel like the values that I hold above all others, the values I learned from my mainstream Protestant upbringing -- charity, forgiveness and compassion -- are now no longer valued by a majority of Americans. Faced with the choice between owning up to some unpleasant truths or instead burying their heads in the comfortable myth of American exceptionalism, a majority of the voting public chose the latter.

America is no longer my country. It is no longer a place where I feel welcome, where the ideals of our Founding Fathers are respected. While I still pledge to fight to re-establish these ideals, I cannot help but feel great despair and sadness at this unfortunate passing of events.

My world and welcome to it. We're in Stage 3, though: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. The Republicans and their media lapdogs had to pull out literally all the stops, and they still only got 51% for their boy. This was the guy who two short years prior to this, was at a 90% approval rating.

They had to resort to every trick in the book, fair and unfair, to squeak out a marginal victory. And considering the general ineptitude of this bunch of criminals, they aren't likely to start making better decisions anytime soon. Take a couple of months off, enjoy the holiday season, then get ready for the 2006 election cycle. We did pretty darned good at the AAA level this go-round, and there's every reason to believe that we'll do better in 2006, winning houses in state legislatures and governorships all over the country.

...votes by legitimate means. Where is the Kerry/Edwards camp over-turning the ballot boxes and computer voting machines to expose this fraud. The party rolled over and gave the darkside their victory in 2000 without a challenge, they allowed the mid-term elections with all of the touchscreen voting machines problems to go unresolved following the 2002 realizations and now after this most important election, the democrats appear to be giving in as well. The middle and working classes of America have lost political representation and influence. We have been cut loose from the ship of state and are floundering in the sea of misrepresentation.

...the military and the relgious fundementalists. Even our democratic leaders and representatives have turned their backs on us and are moving over to the neo-conservative darkside. It is up to each of us to find our own political direction and purpose now and essentially to survive with our beliefs until freedom, democracy and truth returns.

this is exactly how I feel.

I think that the majority of America shares values that are not mine, and ignorance that is not mine.

We are Americans in Exile in America. Just like those of us who believe that a spiritual faith and belief in Christ is supposed to be about a good and inclusive message of love and compassion, peace and openness, gentleness and mercy are Believers in Exile from the American Christian Religious mainstream.

We are exiles.

.were broadcasting a British parliamentary discussion session from last week where the representatives were grilling their Prime Minister (Tony Blair) right after the U.S. election results on Wednesday.

I was left with a clear impression that we in America have been laboring under the delusion that we have a democratic representative government. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we have in Washington DC is a stage play upon which actors stand before nearly empty seats in the halls of the House and Senate, talking to recording machines and video cameras so their voices can be part of an official historical record, while the real business of political action takes place in the back rooms and representatives offices, with pay-offs and dictated legislation and bills, rammed through for approvals without review or challenge or even disclosure to the American people. The well paid propaganda machine coming at us over the airwaves and in print feeds us lies and distortions while our governmental representatives remain insulated from accountability and even thru disclosure of their real actions. A shadow government, totally hidden from the electorate pushes through a reactionary conservative agenda that will deprive Americans of our constitutional rights and we will hardly see it happen.

Perhaps the British parliament is play actors as well. But if such an event had taken place in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, where every seat had to be filled and the members were required to sit on benches next to one another, shoulder to shoulder facing the opposite side of the house, and the public could watch at a close distance and view the American representative debates in action, we might soon put a stop to the lies and deceit that is so pervasive in the American political process. Can this happen our lifetime, or will we continue to fall into the abyss of dictatorship, plebiscite rule by the privileged wealthy few and rubber stamp legislators? I believe the answer will come during this next four years.