Every four years this nation is split in half by a bipartisan scalpel and in the aftermath—the interim between each election—undergoes three-and-a-half year rest therapies to let the sutures heal properly into a marketable scar, as blemishless as possible.  And our nation, under a church-run state, this so misnamed and misguided America, whose flag refuses to acknowledge secondary colors, shall prosper and fatten like a head swelling with bravado.  And our re-elected government, so affirmed with recent majority of both an electoral and popular vote, our governmental capitalism “of oil, by oil, and for oil”—as Kerry wrote a few days before election day—shall force the less fortunate nations of our hopeless world to perish from the earth.  Are we so money-driven that dollar signs have displaced the most basic and secondary-natured of human virtues?  Is our need for property greater than our need for a filial bond, wealth a heavier desire than compassion and altruism?  Or have we somewhere unlearned our sense of these balances, forgotten the enormous differences between prosperity and love, and made them synonyms?  The banner wilts, and the resultant rag are hoisted synchronous with a descending, ashen cloud.
               Liberalism becomes not a politics but a refuge, sanctity inside which to wallow in desperate contempt and alienation.  Diversity dwells there, integrity, racial tolerance, and bilingualism.  And like an egomaniacal judge wielding an weapon that is half-gavel, half-M-16, our commander-in-chief presides with the intelligence of a twelve-year old, the grammar and eloquence of a piece of farm machinery.  Should it be mandatory that a president speak at least two languages, that he or she be educated?  What are the traits of an educated individual?  Knowledge, temperance, compassion?  Does our hellish president, overcome by self-aggrandizing greed, exhibit any of them?  Ask yourself.  Should a president be able to serve more than one term?  If power of a presidential magnitude is allowed four subsequent years to metastasize, it dissolves morality into an arrogant mucus.
               “November 2^nd tolls”.  The economic gap between them and us will inflate like a blimp labeled with a Republican smirk.  Capitalism is a cancer much like greed, which feeds on fear and television and cosmetics, gestates with fossil fuels and petty jeweled accoutrements.  The American marriage may or may not be a shiny finger-rock and separate beds.  Millionaires cast gold ballots that brainwash; artists create ballot-mach頷ith flour and water.  Nature coughs hotly on a warming globe.  Rational sanity is inside out.      
            Be a comrade.  Fortunately, terrorism is not out to get us; or, if it is, then terrorism is out to get us, to get to them.  And the “them” are rich capitalist magnates who sit comfortably like puppeteers behind the shield we continue to make and the services we continue to provide for them, content with the tricks and deceits they have told:  killed for:  waged wars over.  Nobody in this room knows.  Perambulation, alcohol, and breathing, distract everyone else.  What makes a man or woman need more than ten sets of clothing?  What makes a man or woman need a man or woman to sweat in a factory to make him or her ten extra sets of clothing?  Attire rarely spoils like food; only up-to-date fashion goes bad.
               Fortunately, we average American citizens may not have to wait in distress another four years for the American Empire to self-destruct.  The re-elected administration plays re-roulette with the voters that elected it.  The average Texan owns 11 guns.  A man who voted for Nadar—his mother does not own a single one:  some Texan owns 22 guns.  Why would anyone need more than ten guns?

            “Numbers threaten values.”  Make no denial about it:  when banks horde our hard-earned monies, and the closest aspects of our attentions are focused on exactly how much of it we lay claim to, there is little space for humanity or conscience.  The gong strikes November 3^rd.  Numerical time shrinks the individual into a blotch on a ballot:  the ballot is processed by a faulty machine: the blotch transubstantiates back into a number, facilitated by a newscaster, to be received by that self-same individual, enthralled by the dictating glare of 2004’s president-elect, the television set.

Jeremy Gardner is an English major at GWU and most recently the author of the poem-a-day manuscript, “pop-bomb”.  He is currently writing a critical thesis on Upton Sinclair, and a novel entitled, "crumb rubber", a reverse chronicle of his experiences working as a laborer/machine operator. With producer Jason Asdourian he created Them Isms "and their currency", a CD of experimental hip-hop, available for $5 at Bridge Street Books or at www.geocities.com/thehartwick/home  where he is self-published.