No Surrender

Despite my reluctance borne by election shell shock(& awe), I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to post my reaction to my team's tough loss this week.

I was completely sold when I found out that Kerry and Co. had chosen Bruce's "No Surrender" as their official (or was it unofficial?) campaign song. Truth be told, I had aligned myself with the Dems. anyway, but "No Surrender" boosted my support to a whole new level. I took it as a sign from God-the Big Boss was behind 'The Boss,' and I believed.

Oh yes indeed. I believed so much that I sang the song all the way down my attic stairs, up the street to the T, all the way from Porter to Copley, where I continued to sing with the impressive crowd that had assembled together to celebrate Kerry's victory and free music. I was still No-Surrendering-it-up sometime later in Joe's American Bar & Grill, pressed up against some stranger, but acting like neither of us noticed in true New England form. I was secretly nervous--not because of the forced frottaging--but because things weren't going so well for the blue team...and the Red Sox had, indeed, won the World Series, proving that something was amiss.

Yet, I believed. The Boss doesn't lie. He is the voice of the middle-class America, right? Surely they would see the lies, the hubris, the absurdity of the terror-o-meter? It couldn't be possible that the very people the current regime had spent the past four years screwing over would actually turn around and vote for this guy, could it? That would defy any sort of reason or logic. Surely America was more intelligent and rational than that.

I did not surrender--not even at three in the morning on a school night when I should have been in bed. I drifted off to sleep shortly thereafter, only to wake up to a reality even more bizarre than my reoccuring Q-bert nightmare: Bush won Ohio. And what did it all come down to? People don't like guys kissing guys. Egregious lies are bad. Poorly executed wars are bad. The economy is bad. But guys kissing--that's REALLY bad.

I finally surrendered. I can't reason with these people. Peel me with a potato peeler in throw me into the ocean instead.

Kerry finally surrendered too, and I have to say that his concession speech had me a little choked up. Seriously. Even then, I kept thinking, "If only he had spoken this way during his campaign, then maybe...." But I had slap myself for my own sanity. In these troubled times, I just have to remember that "this too shall pass." Plus, there are some other countries that are REALLY messed up, so we've always got those guys to make us feel better about ourselves, right?

There's a war outside still raging/you say it ain't ours anymore to win/I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed with a wide open country in my eyes and these romantic dreams in my head." ~ No Surrender by the Boss

It's still a great song. He's a lyrical genius people.