Whenever a presidential election is over and the new president-elect is chosen, American voters usually experience a temporary divide, with the winning voters cheering and the losing voters wishing they had tried harder. Since the very first presidential election in 1789, Americans have experienced this, which has historically lasted from the Wednesday morning following Election Day until Inauguration Day, when American voters basically forgive and forget – and go back to working together to provide liberty and justice for all Americans…

…not this time.

After this year’s presidential election, Americans are at as much of a crossroads today as we were in the 1860s when Americans fought against each other in The Civil War. We are as separated now as we were in the 1960s when Whites and Blacks had to use different restrooms and sit in different sections on the bus. We are as torn and as frightened at this time in our history as we were in 1968 when Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder, four students at Kent State University, were killed by “Nixon’s Army” when they attended a college anti-war protest. And while our Nation has always overcome its division and gone back to one united country after a president was chosen – I fear that we are too far gone this time to unite once again.

Even before the election, those who supported George W. Bush and those who opposed him were more at odds with each other than in past elections – because this year’s race for the White House was not about Republicans and Democrats – it was about the safety and future of our country and its people. As the campaign neared the finish line, both candidates’ parties tried their best to make the American people realize why their opponents were not the right choice. The difference between the two candidates was that John Kerry campaigned on American values and a need for change – and George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of lies and fear.

And now that he has been elected as our president for another four years, he has achieved his greatest accomplishment – he has literally split America in half – and turned the Republican and Democratic parties into the Union and Confederate armies.

I have only lived through nine presidential elections, but I have researched and studied elections that took place before I was born – and I am thoroughly convinced that our country has never been divided this deeply as a result of a president in office. I have seen so many blatant examples of division since the election that it literally sickens me. From thirteen-year-old Steven Truszkowski, a student at Everett Meredith Middle School in Middletown, Delaware who wore a white, short-sleeve T-shirt to school last Friday that read, “The Real Terrorist Is In The White House” across the front in black ink, to the website www.sorryeverybody.com that has thousands of people’s pictures and apologies to the rest of the world for the fact that George W. Bush was elected president – to people like my friends Tom and Carla Brown in Stow, Ohio – who are applying for dual-citizenship with Canada in fear that George W. Bush may implement the draft and send their son David to Iraq.

I don’t know what is more frightening, the fact that the Nation is as divided as it is – or the fact that half of the world either doesn’t know what is going on – or worse, doesn’t care.

As I watched the election rolls come in on November 2nd, I was astounded at the number of votes that Bush got. How could half of America be so blind and/or ignorant of what is actually going on? How can fifty percent of this country support a man who is removing those in his cabinet who oppose his “Saddam-esque” form of leadership and replacing them with “yes-men” and “yes-women” – namely Condoleezza Rice. How can over fifty million people not see George W. Bush for what he really is – a power-hungry tyrant who is no better than Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden? And how on Earth can each and every voter who pulled the lever for George W. Bush not see that if we continue to travel down the road that Bush is driving us down – there may not be an America left to live in?

I don’t know what awaits us in the next four years, but I do know that with Bush in the White House – it won’t be pretty. What I do know is that when something terrible happens to our country while George Bush is too busy spending his Iraqi blood money to notice or care – it will be those who put George Bush back in the White House who will be saying “Sorry Everybody.”