No Blue Bluer than a Red-State Blue

Composer Lawrence Dillon, grad and former faculty of Juilliard but now living and teaching in North Carolina, cries out for the 25 million red-staters who voted for Kerry and sanity:

Don't you think we've been depressed enough this week without taking all the blame for Bush's resounding victory? And how do you feel about the 2.8 million New Yorkers who voted for Bush -- more than in North Carolina and Arizona combined? What exactly is their excuse for being so stupid?

On the night of November 3rd [with my North Carolina colleagues] all anyone could talk about was how depressed they were, how hard they had worked in support of a losing cause, how completely stunned they were by the results. We had no idea that the next few days would bring about a situation in which every Dem in a state that scored 50% or more for Kerry would call us arrogant assholes for living in states where we represent something less than that magic 50% figure....

Kerry got 52% of New Jersey, 44% of North Carolina. That's the difference between a majority and a minority, but it sure as hell isn't the difference between enlightenment and ignorance.

Granted, and if it weren't for the dumb electoral college, we wouldn't be talking that way. I understand the logic of the electoral college, but more and more it seems like a relic of the day when state's rights were an important political issue, when the people of Virginia had more in common with each other than Richmond did with Philadelphia, which is no longer the case. I've got cousins in Waco, Texas, medical doctors, who are just as horrified by Bush as I am. As for those 2.8 million New Yorkers, I suspect a lot of those are not so much stupid, just the fabulously wealthy voting their... short-term, perhaps,,, economic interests.

So here's some sympathy and gratitude to the 25 million out there trying to talk sense into the bigoted and uneducated. I do too easily appreciate living in a precinct that voted for Kerry more than 6-to-1, where I can say anything I want about Bush and get only smiles and nods in return, and if my performance this past weekend had been any place less liberal than Berkeley, I would have cancelled. If I lived in a red state right now, I'd be in the hospital recovering from all the fist fights I'd started. I'm so pissed off at the religious right that I'm ready to marry another man, and I'm not even gay.