Shalom My Gantseh Megillah Family and Friends,

On the day after Election Day 2004 I am shrouded in a sense of loss and sadness. This is not the same feeling I experienced in the past when my preferred candidate lost; but more of an overall trepidation. In the past, elections engendered a determination to move on with cautious optimism, and a sense that all would work out in the long run. This is not the sensation I am dealing with today.

I sincerely feel that my country has lost its moral compass. In 2000, when George W. Bush was crowned president by the Supreme Court, I was able to take comfort in the fact that the majority of my fellow citizens did not elect this man to office. Through the four years that followed, I watched my country respond to an attack by embarking on an ambitious plan to redesign the world.

After 9/11 the administration pulled an old agenda off the shelf which they had developed in the 1990s. Within three years, over 100,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed, and over 1,100 of our youngest and finest men and women serving in the military have also lost their lives. Tens of thousands more have lost legs, arms, parts of their brain and endured unspeakable injury in the name of this selfish agenda.

A blanket of fear spread across our country like a coarse shroud of prickly quills, as we were constantly warned to “be afraid, be very afraid!” Twisted links and unrelated dots were connected by our president and his most trusted advisors. We were told that anyone who did not support the administration’s view was unpatriotic. A proposed program wanted us to spy and inform on our neighbours and even our library choices became a source of interest and concern.

I am bewildered by my fellow citizens who have endorsed this administration of suspicion, gloom and doom. When the majority chooses more of the same for the next four years, it unfortunately becomes all of our responsibility. I cannot take comfort in the fact that this is a presidency of accidental circumstance. No, on this occasion, we are all responsible for the outcome of this election.

We as a country have chosen to give in to the element of fear and to give the middle finger to all of our traditional allies who rejected this president’s view of the world order. We have chosen the meanest bully on the block to protect us from enemies both real and imagined, no matter how much evidence is presented showing we are headed in the wrong direction.

Naturally, it is my deepest and most sincere hope that perhaps this president has learned something in the past four years. I pray he will use his second term to correct his course. And most of all, I hope with all my heart that we will not live to regret the decision that we made on November 2, 2004.

I fully understand that some of my readers do not share my feelings today and to you I extend my hand in solidarity and friendship with hopes we can heal our differences and guide our government in a direction that will bring peace and sanity to the meshugga world around us.

Much love to all of you,
Michael