Superior, Nebraska Where Common Sense Runs Wild

Out Where? Although we've spent much of the past few years living in rural Europe, I happened to be at our home in rural Americain Pennsylvania's corner of Appalachia, to be exactsitting in an office repurposed (some say unconvincingly) from its previous use as a pig barn when I started this book. It was November 3, about four in the afternoon, the day after the 2004 election. I had spent a large part of the morning reading the news on the Internet and much of the afternoon talking on the phone about politics. I had reluctantly voted for Bush. I thought that, like his father, he was deeply cynical, and I hated to hear him talk. I figured a president leading a nation into a very complicated war should be capable of a few Saint Crispin's Day moments without needing a fire truck and a bullhorn as props. The trouble was, John Kerry was all props and no play. He thought the country should swallow his "reporting for duty" jive and fall in line behind him and his weird zillionaire wife while they pretended to relive the antiwar movement's glory days and also, you know, save the poor and some seals. Every time Bush spoke, I and a thousand other apologists would immediately start trying to do his talking for him. But when Kerry opened his mouth, all I could hear was Country Joe and the Fishexcept Country Joe was at least clear on the issues. It was stretching it, to me, to call Bush the best of a bad choice. But it seemed a snap to call Kerry the worst. To most of rural America, however, including the Pennsylvania part, Bush was just fine. Aside from a brief conversation with Tom Morrall at the feed mill, there were no "moderate" phone calls. A magazine editor in Washington carefully prefaced his comments by saying, "I hope you're not a Republican." I told him I was an independent. He hesitated for a moment, probably calculating the difference between "independent" and "liar," then began complaining about the "moronic" voters who'd been seduced by homophobia and lust for war. I reassured him that I feared nothing but war. Another guy, a New Yorker who worked at an entertainment magazine, told me that somebody ought to look into all that vote rigging in Ohio and maybe Florida. From NPR I heard a groan of grief and disbelief sweep across America's blue states. The sorrowful incredulity raced across the water: A friend in Europe emailed me, demanding to know why the hell Americans had learnednothingfromFarenheit 9/11. But not everyone was depressed that day. Neighbors who'd long ago asked me to please stop making them into rural silage for "that crazy stuff" I write were in a good mood. The guy a couple of farms over called with an ag question but ended with a lastminute topic change: "Kicked butt yesterday, bud." A dairy farmer stopped by to gloat: "Hey,thatwas fun!" One fishoutofwater New York Republican gleefully informed me that he'd spent the morning after the election on Manhattan's Upper West Side, "soaking up the gloom." My cousin Deb, an accountant, called from Mankato, a county seat in northern Kansas, just south of the Republican River. She had a question for me: "Hey, what happened to you guys in Pennsylvania?" "Happened? Kerry got the Philly and Pittsburgh vote." The margins there had been enough to push the commonwealth into the Kerry column. Pennsylvania had gone to the Democrats by 100,000 suspect votes from the bigcity precinctsabout the same suspicious margin by which Bush took Ohio, next door. &Boyles, Denis is the author of 'Superior, Nebraska Where Common Sense Runs Wild', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385516747 and ISBN 0385516746.