On Wednesday morning, there was a shock in the air. A civil war is going on, writes novelist Colum McCann in New York.
I have often thought that I am a person of two countries: having grown up in Ireland and then having spent a considerable amount of time in the US I always felt that I have had my hands in the jangle of two full pockets.
As of Wednesday morning I now believe that I live in three countries and that the third pocket might well be dark and empty.
There are few words for the considerable grief I now feel after the election of 2004: to wake up Wednesday morning was to wake up in another country, one that I must confess I do not understand.
I do not understand the triumphant face on the front of the newspapers. I do not understand you, Ohio. I do not understand the mother of the dead soldier who voted for her commander-in-chief, a man who sent her son to an unsubstantiated war. I do not understand the giant red map that leaves blue on its edges like an afterthought. I do not understand you, you Catholic bishops in Colorado, who told the people how to vote, who endorsed a regime that endorses the death penalty, who made cheap ideas from unborn children. I do not understand nor recognise your God as the God you seem to recognise. I do not understand you, you fundamentalists, who make this country look more and more like Afghanistan. Nor do I understand you, you hawks, who make Afghanistan look more like America.
I do not understand the thousand and more dead young men and women who have been brought back from Iraq, unphotographed, flagged and boxed. I do not understand you, Florida. I do not understand you, John Kerry nor your churlish Wednesday afternoon concesion speech. I do not understand the raised fists. I do not understand the gritted teeth. I do not understand the lack of empathy.
There is so much that I admire about this country but I am at a loss to gather it together and present it. I am sad. I am raw. I am empty. I am prepared to believe indeed that it is my own failure, that I am romantic, that I'm sentimental, that I'm out of touch, I'm blinkered, I'm a guileless liberal, that I'm a New Yorker, that I cannot fathom the heart of this nation. I should go off and sulk, shouldn't I? Or I should somehow take it on a chin, like a man.
But then I must also believe that at least 48 per cent of this country woke up on Wednesday morning feeling the exact same way. There was a shock in the air. On the buses there was a stupefied silence. In the New York Public Library people were crying on the steps. On the Internet there was a rush of rage. In the heartland of America there was much glee.
How to understand this civil war? This is a civil war. That's unfortunately how we understand it.
On Wednesday morning I held my son in my arms, my American son, and prayed for him. Do I overreact? Very well then, I overreact. I do not want him to go to war 12 years from now, when he turns of age. Nor do I want him to forget that there is so much to admire about this great, sprawling land mass of contradictions. My daughter, seven years old - I do not want her to unlearn that this is a place where women actually have rights to speech, to mind, to land, to body. And my one-year-old, my willful little boy named Christian: how I hope he will be the truest form of what his name suggests.
But so what? So what with all my high emotion? So what? Why don't I just shut up? I have had my shout. Now it is time for silence, surely? No. Now is the least time for silence.
What I understand now: George Bush is very smart indeed. For the past year I have characterised him as an idiot but, in fact, I, and many like me, have been the idiot. The man is shrewd. He comprehends the depths of shallow language. He knows how dangerous it is to photograph a coffin. He is aware exactly of how to take the oxygen from the air. He refuses to grieve, he refuses to mourn, he refuses to empathise. He is acute to the fact that the issue of gay marriage might influence a sizeable part of the nation. He also knows that abortion will corral a heart's mind - bedamned the future of coathangers. He has learned the trick of turning wine into water. He wears his God so very well. His moral weathervane does not sway.
He understands the stupidities of complexity. He recognises the value of aggressive cynicism. He knows that wars remain war, no matter what language we give them. He also knows that while poor people commit terror, rich people commit war, but the rich have enough money to pretend that it's right. He can say shock and awe. He has said it. One only hopes he will not say it again.
Colum McCann, whose most recent novel is Dancer, is based in New York