"It's our worship word too,"  says Captain Kirk. To settle the issue, the Yang leader opens a box and pulls out some age-worn parchment. He says he will begin, reading from the old “holy scipt,” and Kirk must finish.

“E Plebnista…” he says, with more garbled English in its wake. Eventually Kirk wins a duel with the renegade Federation officer to settle the issue. Then he explains that he did not understand the holy words, for they were spoken so badly. In a moment of William Shatner ecstasy, he thrusts out his chest, pointing out the first three words in the holy scriptures, written taller than all the rest—not E Plebnista, but ‘We the People…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’

Eventually, the Yangs prevail and their leader proclaims that he has conquered the last of the Khom places. “That which was ours,” he says, “is ours again. It will never be taken from us again.” Refrains of Yankee Doodle end the show as Kirk and Spock beam back to the ship.

Well… I wanted to lead with that line for this article, in celebration of a Kerry win. “That which was ours, is ours again.” But E Plebnista had something to say about it that I, and 55 million other Americans, did not expect. E Plebnista voted to return Bush to the oval office for another four years, and this time by a comfortable margin in the national vote—seven times the advantage Gore enjoyed when he was denied the presidency in 2000--at least that how it seems. As in the 2000 election there were again serious allegations of election fraud, particularly in the battleground states like Ohio. Democratic and minority precincts experienced long lines, waits of up to 4 hours or more, insufficient voting machines, faulty machines, Democratic precincts where the vote went all to Bush, tampering with the voter rolls, suppression of Democratic voter registration, hit squads dispatched from Texas to carry out dirty tricks in key precincts, provisional ballots being denied or thrown out by Republican state officials. As Stalin said, “it’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.” In every instance the irregularities favored Bush, and methodical exit polls showing Kerry with a solid lead were all overthrown, a statistical impossibility.

So it is done. The electorate has spoken, but only some voices were heard. The progressive and liberal voices, huddled away west of the Sierra Nevada range, camped about the great lakes, and nestled in the leaf sewn vales and bustling cities of New England were just not enough to carry the day in the face of such a concerted effort to suppress them. E Plebnista came out from their farms and small rural towns in the heartland, the breadbasket, the great sweeping plains and the humid old south, and they voted for Bush. And almost no allegations that Bush votes were miscounted have ever turned up.

They live a different life there, so different from all of us out on the coastlines of the continent who smell the salty spray of the ocean each night. We worry about earthquakes, they worry about tornadoes and terrorists. We worry about civil rights, equal opportunity, and economic equity—they worry about gay marriages, wishy washy politicians, abortion and abolition. We worry about the terrible cost of the war in Iraq, in lives and blood—they worry about finding them WMDs. We worry about the rising cost of energy, and the diminishing supply of oil and gas with no alternative in sight. They drive pickup trucks, Hummers and SUVs, and don’t worry much about that at all. They’ve got a kick-ass leader in the White House that will bring home all the oil and gas they need. We worry that the world will turn its back on us once and for all now—they don’t seem to be bothered by those UN loving ‘one worlders’ teeming beyond our shores. We live in crowded cities, drive crowded freeways, deal with air pollution, smog, acid rain and wonder how much more the environment can take. They wake up to clean country air and quiet two lane highways with miles and miles of empty space, and they wonder what in the world we are talking about with all this hullabaloo over pollution. Don’t see none here abouts, do ya?

The pundits tell us that this election was about good, old fashioned home spun values. Carl Rove made sure that the issue of gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research tapped into that fundamental evangelical love of life and family and got them all out from their churches to the voting booths. I have never been able to figure out how people so adamantly dedicated to the sanctity of life can be so unmoved by the daily news of innocent Iraqi civilians killed when one of our 500 pound bombs targets a suspected “terrorist” safe house and ends up killing Hasan, Khalid, his cousin Jamil, two sons, a daughter, a wife, a grandmother... That’s just hunky dory with these sanctimonious, god-fearing religious folk who are so quick to sanction this war with their vote.

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable."
— U.S. historian Howard Zinn, 1993.

Well… there’s another old saying, the stuff of folklore, that the likes of E Plebnista should be well acquainted with. Be careful what you wish for…you may get it. They wished for a strong leader who would keep them safe, keep the price of gas nice and low, keep the church bells ringing and extend the range of freedom and democracy to every quarter of the earth. It’s not such a bad wish, when you think of it. Who would not want the safety and comforts of the American way of life? Who would not want cheap, abundant energy, a life with real believed values, a quiet reach back to a time when the world was not so complicated and dangerous? The people in the Red States are, after all, mostly decent, religious and loyal people who believe in America and have a great love of country that is second only to that which they hold for their deity. They may be conservatives, and have ideas tailored by a narrower intake of information and long held beliefs…ideas that would make the average liberal grin, (or grimace) but they aren’t evil people. They are not our enemies. They are not the Khoms.

And, let’s face it, conservative America is alive and well out there. Modernity has not yet taken the full measure of them at all. The Internet has not yet been a broad enough portal for conveying new information. Or perhaps there are just not enough book stores within easy drive of those rural farmsteads. Could that be the reason why they think and believe as they do? Don’t these people read? I have asked myself this many times in discourse with Bush supporters throughout the long and sometimes bitter election campaign. Is it just that they don’t really know what is happening out there in the rest of the world, or is it just that they don’t really care? Could it be that simple? They’ve got their quiet life, a few tree sewn acres, country air, and they are oh so far away from those churning cities on the coastlines, crowded with crazy liberals. That’s where them big planes hit the buildings, wasn’t it?

E Plebnista have it made in the proverbial shade. They are insulated from the worries and daily struggles of all us big city folks…buffered by miles and miles of open two lane highway, and protected by a president who says what he means, and means what he says, and never changes his mind…even after all we have seen in the last four years.

After 9-11…Afghanistan…Tora Bora…Bin Ladin's escape…After the Boogieman Saddam with his reputed "stockpiles of WMD" and "nuclear intentions"… After the squabbling in the UN, and protests all across the globe… After Iraq, the invasion, the $120 Billion, the $87 Billion Kerry voted for, then voted against…After Bloody April…Abu Ghuraib… the Halliburton no-bid contract scandals… After Sadr’s militia and a witches brew of new insurgency and terror groups in Iraq… after 30,000 dead innocent civilians…and the endless congressional hearings…After O'Neil's apology and resignation…Shinsecki's warning and removal…a CIA that got it all wrong and then found its director sacked…after Secretary of State Powell was marginalized, used, and then humiliated when everything he told the world was wrong… After lost allies and credibility… a thousand lost soldiers…10,000 wounded, many for life... the hidden caskets and secret burials of the fallen… After suicide bombers and burning pipelines …Oil over $50 / barrel… After the 9-11 commission stall…And their report of mistakes made and lessons unlearned… of ports and borders that remain unguarded… After the heat of the campaign, from Farenheit 9-11 to the Swiftboat sleaze…and after Carl Rove came down from his Bat Cave in the White House to make his announcement. After Florida, and Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Nevada, and Ohio hanging fire, the buck stopping at last in the buckeye state where as many as 350,000 votes may have been miscounted.

And So It's over. E Plebnista have spoken, and we must respect the will of the people, those three words captain Kirk pointed to in the holy scrolls, that were really faded replicas of the US constitution. Here we are at the end of it all... And they voted for Bush again…As if nothing was wrong at all…as if it was all just a problem we cooked up in the liberal media.

As I dropped a young 14 year old off at school this morning, I explained that, while 55 million of us voted for Kerry, it appeared that another 59 million out there voted for Bush. And that was that. Then I decided to console myself and pick up a donut at the drive-through on the way to work. I pulled in behind a massive black Hummer, and noticed a huge white Ford Econovan behind me in the line—both with Bush stickers. There I was in my economical little Honda, with all of 40,000 miles driven in the last eleven years.

I sighed... and the only words that could possibly explain how I felt at that moment came like a clarion call to my mind. They were the words of a poem written by one of my dearest friends, a fellow thinker, writer and creative mind living out here on this crazy liberal coastline of California with all the other geeks and nuts like me who voted for Kerry. It went…

Marines are landing jolly joe jughead my that’s fine sandalwood khakis ho by dynamo big bad humm.   Vast fighting vehicles huge horsepower dust ships sail dry season smash ho by dynamo TV Time.   From: Invasion Jazz By Richard Gylgayton

And so it is over now. All the pollsters can go home. The Yangs didn’t beat the Khoms in this episode… The Hannities prevailed over the Coombs instead. (Didn’t we always know it, deep down, that Sean Hannity could beat the living crap out of Alan Coombs if the two ever came to blows instead of feverish words?) And what will we do now, we wonder, as we watch in exasperated frustration at all that is likely to unfold from a second Bush term?

Will we see the war in Iraq go on, and on? Will the fighting in Fallujah begin again soon, and ignite protests all across Iraq and the Muslim world? Will Israel take the air refueling tankers and bunker busters we shipped them recently and launch a strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities? Will the Iranians fire back a rain of missiles, on both our troops and theirs? Will Osama pop up in another message tape and say, “you deserve what’s coming now boys,” (Allah willing, of course). Will North Korea test one of their nascent nukes and shake their fist at us, daring us to do anything about it? Will the price of oil break $70, then soar to even dizzier heights? Will it cost them all more to fill up the truck here at home? Will the jobs keep flowing overseas to India and China while the factories close in Cleveland? Will I ever be able to afford a health care plan and something that vaguely resembles a retirement plan? Will the “bad guys” wearing scarfs and brandishing AK-47s get their a hands on a bomb?

Be careful what you wish for…dear heartland of America. You may just get it.

With all that to think about out here on this liberal coastline, is it any wonder we don’t sleep as well as the folks out on the great grassy prairies of the American breadbasket? They think their president is going to take care of all that stuff, and keep them nice and safe. And we… Well, we know the hard reality of it all, and what will likely happen if we stay on this road of one failed policy after another.

But it’s over. “Stay the Course” prevailed over “Time for a Change.” The people have spoken. E Plebnista .

My friends ask me what they will do now that we’re looking at another four years of Bush, unanswerable to the electorate this time, and with a big vote count mandate and an even tighter hold on congress. Shall we give up the ghost and go away and gnash our teeth, eschew politics forever, sulk in liberal stew, watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and delight in the victim’s transformation—wishing the Fab Five could visit every prairie home and hamlet of the heartland in Kansas?

No... we aren’t going to do that. We’re not going away, dear friends. All 55 million of us are still out here on the coastlines, dreaming our liberal dreams. To all the Bush voters out there in the red states, just remember: Freedom isn’t something colored red on an electoral map. It’s our holy worship word too… We know what you want and, in the end, the it’s the same thing that we are striving for in the blue states. We just go about it differently, and sometimes we just don’t hear one another any more when we talk of things like freedom, democracy and what real values we should hold out to the world… Sometimes the words you speak sound so garbled that we have trouble recognizing them. And I’m sure you have a hard time listening to us as well.

E Plebnista… That’s “We The People…” Red, Blue, and undecided. We’re all in this together now . And if even a fraction of all we see coming in the next four years actually happens, we’ll all stand together when we face it, for good or for ill.

So we can’t go away, and we won’t go away. What, then, shall we do, now that Bush has won a second term?

“THIS IS WHAT YOU SHALL DO:

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy

devote your income and labor to others

hate tyrants

argue not concerning God

have patience and indulgence toward the people

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men

go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young alike

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book

dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

and your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency

not only in its words

but in the silent lines of your eyes

and in every motion and joint of your body...

-Walt Whitman

Now I’m going home to watch Star Trek.

Article by: John Schettler

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