In my haste to describe my dilemma, I neglected to explain why I want to leave the country in the first place (although it is a sobering revelation to realize that I haven't lived in this country for an entire year at a stretch since my junior year of high school).

Bush is only going to get more swaggering and try to pass more outrageous bullshit. And the repercussions are going to be worse and longer-lasting than the first go-round.

Here I was thinking that the Republican party was the party of moral absolutism, but the truth is that the GOP beat the competetion by going post-modern. There's nothing new about repeating a lie often enough to make it true, but the attitude of the Bush administration towards truth is novel and appalling. It hires scientists who hate science and doctors who hate medicine. It eats away at truth from the inside with determined ease. And the second term will give them the chance to appoint more Supreme Court judges who hate the legal system.

First off, Bush voters are by and large misinformed (as I mentioned previously) about basic facts like whether Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. There's nothing intrinsically outrageous about the majority of the country being mistaken about foreign affairs; what is outrageous is that this isn't the kind of lying Nixon or Clinton engaged in: the facts of the matter are public record here, even before the government lied about it. This isn't about a cover-up or withholding secret information (classic American presidential lies), this is about the government lying to your face and having a media echo chamber "verify" it.

What disturbs me about the Bush victory is that Karl Rove has essentially gamed the system, thereby setting the bar for all future campaigns, be they Republican or Democratic.

Let us pause here to consider the Olympics for a moment. Specifically, the Anti-Doping Commission. As some of us know, this body is headed by a man whose name is, and I am not making this up, Dick Pound. (I know this because he's also chancellor of my alma mater.) Many people aren't really aware of the task before the anti-doping committee, but the truth is that competetive sports are really just a race to find not-yet-illegal performance enhancing drugs. Every Olympic participant engages in performance enhancement, whether it's a particular diet, or sleep regimen, not having sex the night before a fight, or whatever. But the conventional wisdom says that certain types of chemicals are beyond the pale. So, the list of prohibited substances keeps growing as people try them out in an attempt to outperform their competitors, who are all likely doing the same thing. Sports just keeps getting dirtier, just like politics.

In a country which is so profoundly and evenly split, the victory in winner-take all contests are those who make small advances. Innovation is rewarded in the political marketplace, no matter the pernicious effects of a particular innovation. And the Democrats refuse to get their hands dirty, which, quite frankly, is why they lost the election.

If the 48% of the country who voted for Kerry is serious about their votes, what they really ought to do is throw all their energy into the 2006 Senate races, but honestly, does anyone think the Democrats have a fair chance to gain 5 senate seats? They might, if things get really bad in the short term. Meanwhile, the Republicans have a excellent organizing tool in churches; where else can you get your operatives to tell you it's a <i>sin</i> to vote for candidate X?