Bush is Back?

Wow, I knew he was favored but for some reason I thought he would loose. I also thought that if was close the Democrats would fight to the finish, especially after the last election. Having been raised in a border town, Windsor Ontario, I guess I've always viewed the "States" as sort of an odd place. Of course living across from Detroit Michigan, a previous murder capital of the country didn't help, nor did the nightly Detroit news casts, endlessly switching between things that can kill you, murders, rapes and a story of say a kitten rescued from a tree. I can remember being very young and laughing at the news with my younger brother, not because death and tragedy are funny but because of it's sheer insanity. (Those of you who have seen "Bowling for Columbine" know what I'm talking about.) Is this really what adults wanted to see every evening? On both sides of the border? Not that things have gotten much better, Y2K put me off the Detroit news for months (how the heck could a water main break be y2k related? Really..) , and then most recently the wars in response to Sept. 11. Now not all of my exposure to the states has been through the news. I have relatives I see at least once a year who live just outside of Detroit, and some in Florida, and in my last job I got to travel to all over the states, and over seas to Japan. So I've met a lot of Americans, and seen a lot of their major cities. So what is it that seems so odd to me about the states? I guess I can only describe it as a mass underlying fear/uneasiness. It's the little things that you notice that sometimes make my Canadian friends laugh and then say oh you're serious. Bulletproof glass at a Kentucky fried chicken with a sealed door to get your food. A huge amount of households with a gun for protection, despite the fact that it's more likely to kill a occupant of the house than an intruder. Racism I never knew still existed. There is always places you never go, or you will be mugged or attacked. Smoking and drinking are okay but weed will land you in jail. It seems like a lot of gas stations don't trust you to pump then pay. Police pull you over for doing less than 10km/h over the limit on the highway. Now I'm not saying that its some hell hole over there by any means, it is an amazing country, and some of the friendliest people I've met are from there. The key word is underlying, and by no means is my country perfect. To start bringing this post back towards the election.. On September 11th I was in Houston Texas. I was watching CNN news when they first broke the story of the first plane hitting. I immediately knew being a pilot of small craft myself that a larger craft had hit and good visibility pretty much ruled it out as an accident. My immediate worry was about how they were going to respond, even before the second plane hit. War already seemed inevitable. Later that day we went to our job site, a oil drilling rig just outside of Houston. All tall buildings had been evacuated and the sky's were completely void of condensation trails. (something only a plane nut would notice). Everyone was talking war and revenge to a point that made me and my college's uneasy. No one had claimed responsibility, but it really didn't seem to matter. Later it came out that things were not much different in the white house at the time. It took us a while to get out of Houston but a fellow worker and I eventually went home. That was the only flight in a commercial airliner that I was afraid. The pilot lowered the nose just after coming off the runway and seemed to do this low altitude evasive turning followed by a harsh pull up to climb, something I can't even explain accept for possibly collision avoidance. Anyway here we stand in retrospect and most agree that the wars were a bad idea, and that they have furthered themselves from other countries. I would like nothing more than to see the states repair these relationships and start thinking more globally and cooperating with the UN more. The nation is in fact split, right down the middle actually if you look at the map. I think it is a good sign that so many people voted, but I'm not sure what to make of such blatant boundaries. To clarify I am not afraid of the states, I am more so concerned for it. After all they are our neighbor, and we are fairly dependent on them economically. I just think things could get better if the country as a whole just took a deep breath, ignored the current terrorist alert level, which I believe is currently at Bert, turned off CNN, and just relaxed. I hate to think that Bush won out of fear, and that both major parties talk about being responsible for the world and in charge of it. Is it ever a good idea for the most powerful person to be in charge? How much longer will they be the most powerful? What does this say to the UN? Other countries are getting more and more powerful, and many are not their biggest fans. Maybe it's just me getting older and more aware of what's going on in the world but I feel we're moving further away from peace. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure historically these situations don't work out well for anyone. In summary this fear and uneasiness is felt by me, which if you've gotten anything out of this post is not a good thing.