The shock is heavy — a physical pain deep in the gut. It's the shock of learning that a loved and trusted friend has betrayed you and the values you thought you shared.
More than 55 million Americans share the shock and the sadness. Many times that number of people around the world share it too.
And we all share the fear. The fear that America has just become a far more arrogant and dangerous bully roaming the seas and skies and heavens.
Fifty-nine million Americans declared their support for Bush administration policies. That's a lot of people with a lot of lethal weaponry to be abrogating international treaties, subverting international standards, and proclaiming the right to wage pre-emptive war, whenever and wherever they want, without any "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" (an idea Thomas Jefferson thought so important he included it in the Declaration of Independence).
The world has every reason to fear and mistrust this nation. More so now than at any time since its founding in 1776.
Americans also have reason to fear. The U.S. Constitution embodies the fundamental principle that the will of the majority is limited by the rights of the minority. That is the original idea and purpose of the "limited government" embraced by the Founders. But the Bush administration has made it clear that it won't adhere to any standards, rules, or even laws that impede its goals. If pursuing them requires persecuting some people and violating the rights of others, they do not hesitate to do so.
One of the weaknesses of democracy is that sometimes the wrong and the ill-intended prevail in elections. Sometimes a misled electorate votes for the candidate that then dismantles its democracy. And no other American electorate has been as misled as this one by the "black-is-white" deceptions of the Bush administration.
As big and powerful as it is, the American Bully is still, in the end, no different from other bullies. Though they often spill vast quantities of blood, history is filled with the blunders of bullies and the tales of their ends. All bullies have Achilles' heels. Perhaps this one's is its righteous certainty or its ideological blindness to reality. All bullies eventually fall; the bigger, the harder.
To Americans who supported John Kerry, do not forget that there are many times the number who voted for him around the world who share our shock and fear and long for a world where all nations live up to internationally recognized standards of human rights, justice, and free and fair elections.
To non-Americans who supported John Kerry, do not forget that almost as many Americans voted against Bush as voted for him. Do not view us as united in support of this administration's policies. Many of us recognize the danger he poses and worked as hard as we knew how to retire him. We, too, wish that our nation would once again respect and adhere to international standards and the rule of law.
Standing together is the most effective way to deal with a bully. Hundreds of millions of people are united in our opposition to the direction the Bush administration wants to take the world. We need each other now more than ever.