the first results didn’t start coming in until midnight in ghana. i had to wake at 7 for a meeting, but stayed up till 1:30am when new jersey came in for kerry. it was nerve-racking watching cnn and frustrating knowing i needed to go to bed.

when my alarm went off at 7am (2am EST), i flipped on cnn, and larry king and wolf blitzer were still at it! it was like nothing changed. except the country was now filled in with more color and everything hinged on ohio–and you all went to bed. and i went to work.

i think the country was divided into three camps, which gave bush the edge he needed:

• the anti-bush camp (who voted for kerry)
• the anti-anti-bush camp (who voted for bush)
• the pro-bush camp (who voted for bush)

kerry could never effectively transform the substantial anti-bush camp (apparently 48% of voters) into a pro-kerry camp, and so he inadvertantly created the splinter anti-anti-bush movement, who just didn’t like the idea that so many people were voting for kerry because of some intellectual grudge they had against the outwardly cuddly, though admittingly bumbling president.

so they voted for bush out of spite and in solidarity with the common man. kerry was his own spoiler. such as life.

oh my god, the debate last night was SO awesome.

my friend casey lives in berkeley in a house with 5 other people, all of whom brought friends over to watch the debate and drink beer. after working all day, we stopped at the berkeley bowl to pick up some fixins for guacamole and dropped in on their debate watching party.

i’ve never really seen john kerry speak, and i avoid watching bush struggling to communicate at all costs, so this was a real eye-opener for me. damn though, i was seriously impressed with kerry. i’ve been underwhelmed by the completely unprogressive nature of his campaign, and so i kind of wrote him off. but he definitely displayed a persuasive command of the campaign issues and demonstrated he could think on his feet and be charismatic at the same time.

bush, on the other hand, does not have the mental capacity to be president, and i’m vehemently opposed to the ideology of his war-machine administration. so he can go suck eggs.

anyway, imagine 10-15 people sitting around a tv drinking beers and watching this debate like it was a major sporting event. everyone was watching seriously, and then there’d be some incredible put down or in your face comment and we’d be like howling and stomping our feet on the floor. or at least i’d be like that. it was fun. hella fun.

peace out to my west coast homies.

apparently osama bin laden, al qaida, and the taliban were responsible. and people wanted revenge. i felt that way too. but within a few days i started thinking about the endgame. we could punch back. but then what? if you indiscriminately bomb countries that “harbor terrorists” you’re probably gonna piss off some would-be terrorists.

it occured to me that the appropriate response lay in eliminating the seeds of terrorism: reducing poverty, fighting for social justice, and improving american public relations (aka foreign policy) around the world.

i just hoped the people who decided our countries’ official response would come to the same conclusion. that they would rise above the mass retaliatory knee-jerk gripping the country. it didn’t seem like they would, and looking back, we know that they did everything but.

less than a week later, a teach-in entitled understanding the attack on america was scheduled at unc. the gist of this impromptu panel was that our politicized and schizophrenic american foreign policy has a pretty crappy track record. this was not to say we deserved what we got, but rather to understand current events within the context of recent history.

i had no real sense of politcal identity before september 11th, feeling as out of touch with the “liberal” democrats as their “socially conservative” republican counterparts. but at this teach-in i discovered a group of people calling themselves progressives, who were much more politically and socially innovative than your average democrat.

in a single instant what had previously been loosely connected feelings and my gut responses to current events coalesced with the existence of a way to communicate them.

in the fall of 2001, i was just beginning my fourth year at unc, living in a single room in spencer dorm.

on september 11, i was sleeping in. the alarm wasn’t playing music when it went off. people on the radio were just talking.

before pressing the snooze button something about a plane crashing into a building seeped into my subconsious. i still have this mental image of a small biplane hitting a skyscraper.

i finally got up around 10, wrapped myself in a towel, grabbed my shower bucket, and headed down the hall to the bathrooms. but first i stopped at the room opposite mine. the door was open and one or two guys were watching tv. i remember seeing what was probably an aerial shot of manhattan cloaked in smoke.

i asked what was going on and they told me, in disbelief, that the news said the twin towers had collapsed. i continued down the hall and took my shower, figuring that can’t be right.

i have two memories from the rest of that day. the first is going to class, but there was no point in having any class. eventually it dissolved and we went to the big lecture hall in manning where a professor had decided to project cnn on a big overhead screen.

the second is back at the dorm, where i found friends watching the tv in alice’s room. they were just starting to broadcast the incredible amateur footage, and i remember viscerally experiencing the planes hitting the buildings over and over again and then the buildings collapsing over and over again.

it rained on and off today, which put the kibosh on our outdoor movie designs.

i thought it might be fun to go see fahrenheit 911 on opening night. a few people mentioned it–jane said the varsity had sold out. it was also playing at the rialto (nice theater, but way out in raleigh) and the carolina theater in durham.

i figured i had a sporting chance at the carolina, their website said the box office doesn’t start selling tickets until 30 minutes before the first showtime. so i got in the car and drove to durham. which is not something i do a lot.

when i got there the 7pm had sold out, the 9:20 had less that 100 tickets left, and they had added an 11:30pm showing. i was able to get three tickets for 9:20. one for me, one for jane, and one for her friend heidi from peace corps, in town for a wedding this weekend in charlotte.

i drove back home very pleased with myself and had some food. i was happy that i’d be seeing it in a packed, sold-out theater with other energetic fans also seeing it for the first time.