letter to the editor

After my rage had subsided a bit yesterday, i wrote the following letter to my gformer local paper in the US. I suspect they haven't printed it as I haven't receiuved any emails from old friends commenting oin it...

Dear Editor

I sit here in Europe having left Brattleboro in July, feeling as angry, scared and depressed as I can ever remember feeling. After 6 years in Brattleboro, I now live in Romania and want to express my solidarity with the people of Brattleboro and of Vermont in what will undoubtedly be the toughest four years in US and world history.

In some ways I feel like someone who has gone through a terrible experience with an ex-. I first came to the US in 1995, and slowly but surely fell in love with the country. I admired its values, respected its history and loved its freedoms. So enamoured was I that I moved in. I had many blissful yeras before starting to realise not long after September 11th, 2001, that something in our relationship was wrong. It wasn't me that had changed but the country. As more and more anti-democratic legislation was passed, and more and more of what I had assumed to be the core values of the country were eroded, I felt cheated on. With hindsight I realise that my partner's affair started in Florida in November 2000, but at the time I had thoiugh it was a one-off problem. Finally, unable to conceal my disappointment and betrayal any longer, I left in the summer of 2004. As time has passed in this seperation, I have wondered if we could ever be friends and resume a normal speaking relationship. Today, as I sit here terrified for the future of the world and of the next four years, I realise that at least until 2008, there is no going back. There is no rapprochement between me and the USA I thought I knew.

I am angry. Angry with the media which has consistently failed to challenge the Bush administration, angry with the voters who were duped into voting for this madman and his cronies, angry with the US for letting this happen. I am scared. Scared for the world, scared for the people who will be directly affected by this vote and who had no say in it. And I am depressed. Depressed that for the next four years at least the country I once loved will be dragged ever closer to being a fundametalist theocracy and an imperial military power.

I feel like the US has stuck its middle finger firmly in the face of the world and said, in effect, f*** you. I fear for America, for the people I know, for my friends and loved ones in the USA, that now the anti-bushism that has gone around the world will translate into full-on anti-Americanism. I can feel it in my blood, and I can already see it around me. We can forgive you once, but a second time is too much, is the sense I am getting.

I am sorry for all of you, and I hope you feel the same sympathy for those of us who didn't get to vote and who will suffer just as much.

Andrew Hockley