If violence is the language of the inarticulate, then we were doomed to more war whichever way this election went. We could vote for Bush, who can’t form a sentence (can, in fact, barely form words), or for Kerry, who used many elegant sentences and grand words, but never quite got around to saying what he meant. Kerry at least was speaking his own thoughts. Bush is more like the Mouthpiece of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings – an empty shell who, having sold his soul to a power greater and more evil than himself, is sent forth to spout that power’s messages. If Bush could actually speak English, that message might have been clearer (“I will do whatever my handlers damn well please. Anyone who’s not an obscenely rich white guy can go to Hell.”), and the election would have gone the other way.

I had friends over for the debates (the misery/company thing), and we shot suction-cup darts at Bush, covering the TV screen with little circles of spit. Kerry came in for a few shots, too, for his inability to say what he meant. Like, when Dubya would start dribbling (for the fiftieth time) about Kerry changing his mind on the war, and Kerry would start mushing about global tests. How hard would it have been to say, “First of all, you have to have a mind in order to change it. Second, I voted for the war on the basis of information from the White House. I changed my vote when that information turned out to be false.” He didn’t have to say, “You lied us into war,” but for crap sake, he should have said SOMETHING.

And yet it was Bush’s garglings about “nuculer” and “these internets” and “haters,” and that fake little laugh of his that “resonated” (as the pundits say) with the American public. “Resonate” is an analogy to acoustics. Sound resonates in a large, empty space, which is a fine analogy for the skulls of the majority of voters.

Example: NPR interviewed a little old lady (she sounded like just the sweetest little old thing) who had just heard Laura Bush give a speech. “Oh, it was wonderful,” the lady warbled, “Her voice was good, and her elocution was just perfect! She stands for everything that’s good!” This was followed by a clip from Mrs. Bush’s speech, in which she used the interesting word “dudn’t.” Elocution, my ass. Excuse me, but you, Little Old Lady, have just had your voting privileges revoked. We do not (or at least should not) elect a president on the basis of his wife’s elocution and comportment, or her adoption, as a model of modern American womanhood, of the values set forth in the 1947 Betty Crocker Cookbook.

And here we are with four more years of the Bush presidensity. He LOST in 2000, and still ran things as if every last damn person had voted for him. Imagine how he’ll behave now that he’s been legitimately elected, especially with a Republican majority in Congress. I’m tempted to say that anyone who disagrees with them will have no voice, but that’s not true. What’s true is that anyone who sits grumbling and doesn’t say anything while being run roughshod over by a passel of fascist yahoos will have no voice. It is our duty to tell Bush and the Congress and the public and the next Democratic presidential contenders who we are and what we want and why. We must tell them constantly and very,very clearly, because, alas, they’re just not very bright.