The transatlantic divide

What can be said about the result of the American presidential election? I can only conclude that there is a divide between Europe and the US far greater than previously realised. I've yet to speak to a Bush supporter, not just since Tuesday's election but actually since his initial election in 2000. I simply don't know anyone in Europe who even partially receptive to the line of reasoning put across by the White House. Everyone appears to be in a state of disbelief that Americans have apparently bought this nonsense about being under threat this great unseen enemy, that Iraq had anything to do with the Al Qaeda and that the current war is fighting the terrorist threat. They also seem to have overlooked the rising unemployment under Bush's "watch", and that America has altered for many around the world from being a symbol to idolise to an object of loathing. The country is, after all, marketed and exported as a brand, of which the President is the CEO. When the brand is tarnished, so are all the products associated with it, the American Dream included.

Yet the majority of American voters must have favoured Bush for some reason. Americans' fears and beliefs, patriotism, concepts of good and evil... these and more we can only attempt to understand, but how detached it seems from the way of thinking in the increasingly secular, questioning, social democracies of "Old Europe".