from an unlikely source

thomas friedman is an idiot whom I loathe. but he has some good quotes in his latest piece...he talks about how he just woke up to the fact (as did I and a lot of other people) that it's not actually true that people across the U.S. "share the same core values" (Barack Obama's words on election night, which made me cry because that's when I realized we don't). A few days before election, someone explained to me for the first time (well, via the radio) that there is a sizeable group of people who do not feel that the Bill of Rights is our finest and most fundamental document--rather, they feel it's a terrible mistake, that the Puritans had the right idea and that veering away from theocracy was where the U.S. went wrong.

So Friedman writes, "We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is," and, "people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.This was not an election. This was station identification."

And best of all, "I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out."

Of course, he loses me completely in his last paragraph where he talks about how Bush will prove his greatness only if he can handle "our entitlements crisis...., upgrade America's competitiveness, [and] prevent Iran from going nuclear." (The only person I've recently heard point out that Iran, like anyone else, has the right to defend itself, is, of all people, a survivor of the Iranian hostage crisis, which began 25 years ago today.) Oh, and additional @#$*&#$ to Joe Klein for saying we should overturn Roe v Wade. Jesus h christ. Yeah, exactly.