A time of quiet…

The election is over. The reality is that President Bush will remain President Bush for four more years. There is no way around that; he had a clear majority.

The Blue States and the Red States are tentatively attempting to re-establish contact with one another. States of one color or the other are working to figure out how to be part of the greater nation.

Living in one of the bluest of the blue states, an almost unnatural quiet has descended upon the conversations of the body politic. The New York Post is as stridently conservative as ever; the New York Times covers news as thoroughly as it ever has.

But there is a quiet that has fallen upon us.

Huge amounts of media attention have been paid to an almost fifty-seven year old woman who has given birth to twins; her thunder is about to be stolen by a fifty-nine year old woman who is going to do the same.

The spat between Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden, and the City, which wants a new west side stadium that would compete with the Garden, has risen several decibel levels in the past week.

Up in Columbia County, the top story is about a funding dispute between the village of Valatie and the town of Kinderhook and a youth worker who was arrested for a DWI.

What energy we have is being expended upon stories of distraction rather than substance.

It seems more important to us to follow the problems of the Scott Peterson jury than it does to discuss the shifting global landscape.

There is a lack of conversation about what a second Bush Administration will do. It is interesting, and relieving to many, that John Ashcroft has stepped down but I do not recall a post presidential election time that has been so devoid of discussion regarding how the directions a second presidential term might take.

The world is going through great transitions.

Arafat is dead. How that is going to change the landscape and the possibility for Middle East peace is incredibly important but only the cable news channels are making efforts to have an in-depth conversation regarding what this means and even they seem muted.

Tony Blair is in Washington to have discussions with Bush but it seems almost no one is reporting – or noticing.

It is a time of almost unnatural quiet – or does it just seem that way after the brutal stridency of the Presidential campaign?

Fighting is raging in Fallujah; it isn’t near the top of the news.

Iraq has, in fact, receded into the background – we know we’re there now for a long time and we know, we think, the direction of things. It will be more of the same.

Moveon.org, an organization that has made quite a name for itself in the last year as a catalyst for anti-Republican efforts, has launched a campaign to demand an investigation of voting irregularities during the Presidential campaign.

But everything has an exhausted tone. It is as if all news reporting right now has been drained by the Presidential campaign of energy and enthusiasm. Everyone is doing their job but without much verve.

The Moveon campaign lacks the vibrancy of past efforts. It feels as if it is being done because it must be done but only because it MUST be done if they are to keep their position as part of the opposition.

My most politically oriented friends of both the red and blue persuasion do not want to discuss politics, particularly if they’re red and with a blue, or vice versa. It is now what it is and what it will be and words won’t change anything. People are wary of touching the political nerves of friends who have different political views; better to say nothing.

The quiet is unnatural and probably won’t last for long but it is the quiet that follows a major battle, the exhausted silence of both victor and loser, energy fully spent, with no enthusiasm for victory and no strength for resistance.