So, after almost a week, I still don't want to talk about the election at any great length, because it's still just frustrating and painful. But I do want to relate this story:

I was eating lunch last Friday, and at the table next to me sat four complete and utter louts. (Perhaps I'm being unfair; they might have been members of Mensa. But they were all spellbound, listening to a cell phone ring-tone that sounded like a chimpanzee screeching, and all agreed that this was the funniest thing they had ever heard, so I'm going with "lout.")

Anyway, they were being pretty loud--and were quite well-fed, not that that necessarily means anything--and I couldn't help but hear what they were saying. And eventually, their conversation turned to the subject of the election, and how Kerry supporters were so upset with the result that they were threatening to leave the country. And that was just fine with these folks, because obviously, the country wanted George Bush to be president (which I will spell with a lower-case "p" for the next four years), and the fact that a clear majority had voted for him proved that. And there were the usual lines about the "liberal" media, and they brought up the obvious lies about the missing 380 tons of explosives stolen from Iraq, and how that's obviously a bunch of crap, and so forth. Can't remember all the details, but you get the idea.

And, of course, the facts are that Bush won by the narrowest margin since 1916 (a fact the "liberal media" haven't been touting), and that even though he received more votes than any presidential candidate ever, number two on that list is John Kerry, so that's not such an impressive achievement after all. (Also not prominently featured in the "liberal media.") And then there's the issue of the missing explosives, the facts of which also come from the "liberal media..." By which I mean, of course, the Pentagon. (According to the Pentagon, the bunker with the explosives was inspected and sealed by the UN inspectors, and the seals were intact when the US took control after the invasion. Spin that, conservative monkeys.)

And that's what makes me so frustrated. Not that people are willing to be so stupid as to support this president, but that they can't even be right about their reasons. That they'd rather believe the propaganda machine than the facts.

(Oh, yeah. I remember now; they talked about the increased employment under Bush... Increased employment? The first president since the Depression to lose jobs?)

And if the stumbling block is that people are just too lazy or stupid to believe the truth, then how do you combat that? You can't make people just be smarter. Apparently, you can't even get them to notice what isn't happening to them. I mean, how can you believe in the bogus tax cuts and fail to realize that you're not actually paying less in taxes?

If only there were a way to just keep stupid people from voting...