chez dafyd

Actually, having just posted that thing below, I found Wil Wheaton’s post about the result on his blog. Wil has been very vocal in his support for Kerry, and on November 1 he wrote that “I’m pretty sure that John Kerry will win this election. I am pretty confident that the majority of Americans are fed up with the lies, corporate sell-outs, and reality-defiance of the Bush administration. I am pretty sure that I’ll wake up on November 3rd and tell my wife, ‘Our long national nightmare is over.’“. I doubt he’ll mind if I quote what he wrote today, because it echoes the sentiments I feel (although, clearly, it’s much more acute for him being American and actually voting):

I’m stunned, and at a total loss for words this morning, so I’m going to borrow some words from Oliver Willis: “The amazing thing to me about this race was that Bush could be as divisive as he wanted to be, but it never penalized him. The most important things in the world were responded to with infantile answers or complete ignorance. Where he stood was clear. Simplicity wins.” Apparently, my country holds a fundamentally different set of values than I thought we did, and that scares the shit out of me. I still believe that Bush is bad for America, and though I’m virtually certain that the next four years will be an absolute disaster. Not just because we have gotten four more years of the Bush agenda, but because this election has been an enthusiastic endorsement of that agenda. I hoped I would wake up this morning to the good news that our long national nightmare was over. It’s not over. It’s just beginning.

Last week Wil wrote a short article for Salon, explaining why he was voting for Kerry, and what he would do if Bush were re-elected:

This election is a referendum on the policies and leadership of President Bush. On November 2nd, we will take a simple test: will Americans succumb to terror? Or will we stand up and take our country back? Our hopefully soon to be ex-president once struggled to say, “fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.” Of course, that phrase actually goes: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I hope that, on election day, the American people will emphatically say, “Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you for four years of incompetent, dishonest, arrogant leadership. You may have fooled us once, but you won’t get a chance to fool us again.” For four years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lied to the American people about everything from the cost of Medicare “reform” to their ever-changing justifications for invading Iraq. Throughout this campaign, they have tried to terrorize us into giving them four more years to mislead the country and further enrage the world. A Bush victory would mean much, much more than just the defeat of John Kerry. It would endanger the values that the vast majority of Americans — the majority of Americans who voted for Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000 — hold dear. It would be a victory for terror. So if George W. Bush wins, I will sit down, and I will cry. I will cry for my children, who will most certainly face a military draft, and I will cry for my country, because I believe that America can, and must, do better than George W. Bush. Now, watch this drive.

I think a good percentage of America will sit down and cry with you, Wil.