Steven Shaviro:

I agree with my 83-year-old father, who said that it would take a century to undo the damage to the country that Bush will be responsible for in the next four years. That is to say, the damage will not be repaired in my lifetime, let alone his; and probably not in the lifetime of my daughter either. The United States, and the world, will be a meaner and more oppressive place, with the virtues of tolerance and compassion increasingly under siege, if not altogether obliterated. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it.

What interests me most, in a morbid sort of way, is the motives and desires of the voters on November 2nd. For make no mistake about it: the American people have willfully and knowingly chosen to embrace radical evil. Yes, this was an election about “values.” […]

I think, rather, that 59 million people voted for Bush in full consciousness of what they were doing. They were aware of the harms that they would suffer from this action, but they were willing to put personal advantage aside in order to serve a higher duty … The American people have said, in effect, that no sacrifice is too great, no price is too high to pay, when it is a matter of affirming the Values of bigotry, torture, xenophobia, ignorance, and general social corruption. They have pledged themselves to radical evil, transcendently, knowingly, come what may.

And that is why I have nothing to say. I only hope that I remember, in the years to come, that however grievously my family and myself are harmed by the results of the American people’s moral choice (and this harm will not be negligable: I am likely to find myself destitute in old age, and bereft of the freedoms that I have, thus far, unquestioningly enjoyed and pretty much taken for granted; and my daughter is likely to have many paths of advancement closed off to her), that nonetheless we are still in a relatively privileged position, so that the ills we will suffer will be quite trivial in comparison to those that will be suffered by the vast majority of the population, both in the United States and throughout the world.