With Thanksgiving upon us and the election of 2004 fading like an old burn on soft flesh, it's time for us blue state losers to stop lying around under the bushes licking our wounds. (Wait. Wasn't it the bush doing the lying and us who got licked?) Other than a coterie of Democrats pegging their hopes on conspiracy theories of election fraud in Ohio, perhaps rightly, most Kerry supporters are plodding toward acceptance, looking for any silver lining to be thankful for in the cloud of defeat.

But it's hard to come by. This election loss felt like no other. There have been bigger trouncings and sadder losses, but they were like tornadoes, sucking the wind out and moving on, allowing hope to creep back in. This was like an iceberg calving, as if half the nation had sheered off, leaving a landscape we hardly recognize, with both sides hurling insults across the divide.

On Nov. 3, my e-mail box was filled with hate mail, full of suggestions that this paper can't print. The writers flogged me for being an "elite liberal" and gloated that I'd be utterly miserable for the next four years.

Now, that "elite" part, if true, means I'm going to be just fine -- maybe even get another tax cut, provided Armageddon doesn't get here first. And even if the draft is reinstated, most elite folks aren't going to see their children on the front lines in Iraq -- or Iran or wherever phase two of Bush's Holy War takes us.

It's the "liberal" part -- whatever liberal means in the age of a radical Bush administration that calls itself conservative -- that could cause me some trouble. Political adviser Lee Atwater, late mentor to Bush mastermind Karl Rove, was once quoted as saying, "What you do is rip the bark off liberals." Ouch.

President Bush's actions at home -- the merging of religion and government, the dismantling of environmental protections, the cold shoulder to children living on the margins, the short shrift to civil liberties, and the new round of Bush toadies appointed to the Cabinet, just to name a few, have indeed stripped away most of my bark.

But it's Iraq that leaves me bare.

If being a liberal means grieving for our thousands of injured and dead young soldiers, sent to fight an unnecessary war against the wrong enemy in a cultural and religious tinder keg, then call me liberal.

If being a liberal means to mourn innocent Iraqis who have been maimed or killed, who have watched their cities flattened and their children die as byproducts of this ill-begotten foray into nation-building, then I'm a liberal.

If being a liberal is to despair over the futility of winning a war while savaging a nation, creating a democracy while humiliating a culture, and smashing terrorism while infusing it with new fervor, then call me a liberal, peeled of all bark and yes, utterly miserable.

But Thanksgiving sends us all searching for the goodness in life, the comforts and pleasures beyond the salt-brined free-range turkey, which, I am told, had a far better life than most.

This year that comfort lies in knowing that 58 million Americans did not vote for four more years of irresponsibility and madness. It lies in the distinction of casting my vote in one of the blue states, where IQs are higher, divorce rates are lower, and we pay out more in federal taxes than we take in and don't whine about it.

This year it lies in knowing that four years go by more quickly the older you get, so for some of us it will seem like an eye-blink.

This year, as perhaps in many others, Thanksgiving will serve as a day of grateful diversion in blue states and red; as a time to sit down together with family and friends in homes or shelters or mess tents, trying to forget for a day that there is a place called Iraq, to share a meal browned and buttered with love and caring and hope.

Susan Lenfestey (soolen@aol.com) is a Minneapolis writer.

© 2004 Star Tribune.

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