Required ranting

Song for the day:  Tears for Fears "Everybody wants to rule the world."

Watching the BBC interactive election map thing last night was addictive.  Frequent downloads of new information, states flashing red, blue, or grey, predictions and assumptions flying.  Kerry has officially conceded so Bush wins, also winning the popular vote and Ohio state.  I find it rather odd that the knitting blogs I read are almost uniformly Democrat.  Where are the Republican and Independent and Green knitting blogs?  I know of only two Republican knitters with blogs.  I'm guessing the rest are in hiding, and I'm not surprised.

Can everyone please stop demonising the Republicans and the Democrats now?  If you surround yourself with people who think exactly the same as you do, you never have to bother thinking again.  Your brain turns into a fossil, inert, immovable and dead.  Get out and meet people who think differently and voted differently to you and find out why.  Don't just write them off as ignorant morons, religious bigots, and [insert your favourite derogative here].  You can have a civil discussion with someone you don't agree with, and you might learn something.  Polarisation is not good for America, neither is half of the country vilifying the other half.  You cannot be for democracy and complain that too many of the "wrong people" voted, or assume that no-one thought before voting if they didn't vote your way.  Please stop.  I'm not talking about specific individuals, though I've seen vicious nastiness on many blogs, I'm talking about the mood and tone on weblogs and news sites.  It happened, deal with it, and leave the name-calling to the kindergarten children.