Connect: So, George Bush won the 2004 US presidential election. Although it's depressing to most of us, America and the wider world must acknowledge that. It's telling, however, that his propaganda has been so successful internally and so rejected externally, writes Eddie Holt.
That is a glaring characteristic of totalitarian governments and it does not bode well for international politics.
It wasn't only Bush and his supporters who propagandised, of course. John Kerry's campaign did so too, for that is the nature of electioneering. Yet the US is now more divided than at any time since its civil war of the 1860s. The more than 55 million Americans who voted for Kerry will, for the most part, feel isolated within their own country.
They will hope for a more magnanimous George Bush but the expectation is that they, like most of the wider world, will be disappointed. Should they become even more disillusioned, the glaring faultlines - racial, social and economic - within the US will inevitably grow larger. Populist international support for American Democratic supporters will help but may be ineffective.
It appears that the US is experiencing a moral civil war like that which split this state in the final three decades of the last century. It's much more intense there, however - and has, of course, international ramifications that spats here do not.
To a great number of observers this result means slightly more than half of the American electorate holds the wider world in contempt. Perhaps it does. Certainly, Bush's win endorses American unilateralism, the "war on terror", the invasion of Iraq, tax cuts for the mega-wealthy, the by-passing of the UN, contempt for international treaties, environmental recklessness, erosion of civil rights and a failed policy in the Middle East.
Nonetheless, American voters chose to re-install their president and that is their right.
But it is the right of Kerry voters and non-voting international Kerry supporters to criticise Bush's policies. After all, Republicans cannot claim that American politics are the concern only of Americans while they support the pre-emptive invasion of a foreign country. If they can mess with the internal politics of other countries, other countries have the moral right to reply in kind.
Still, with all the main levers of political power - presidency, senate and congress - now in Bush's hands, he can do much as he likes. Opposition to him in the wealthy world will, by and large, not be forthcoming from governments so populist opposition must be maintained. But it will not be easy, for any ineffectiveness is sure to shed supporters. In short, people are frightened.
There is widespread depression among those who had hoped for an end to the Bush presidency. "A big factor in depression is a sense of hopelessness: the feeling that you can have no influence on outcomes," says psychologist Oliver James. If Bush continues to act as he has done throughout his first term, that sense of hopelessness will deepen.
A normal, perhaps healthy reaction after initial depression, is to try to forget about politics and just accept the world as it is. Maybe George Bush will become less divisive in his second term, but there's no evidence to suggest he'll take such a course. Ominously, there's a great deal to suggest he will carry on as before. Fallujah should quake.
It will be difficult, and probably ultimately impossible, for thinking people to pretend this election result is mere abstract political background to the business of daily living. Most people, even the anoraks who breathe politics, can switch on and off when personal life demands. But this result may have an interminable hum that can seldom, if ever, be avoided.
Nonetheless, we should remember that America remains at war with itself. For foreigners who oppose Bush's neo-con policies, there is a huge internal constituency in the US that agrees with them. Such, however, is the chasm cleaved and widened by Bush that many Kerry voters will feel scared in their own land and the outlook for unifying America, never mind the world, is bleak.
Some psychologists advise people depressed by the result to take refuge in the long view. Bush could alienate enough supporters that a change in American foreign policy would be practically guaranteed in 2008. Today however, that date seems a long way off and America and the wider world may be repeatedly thrashed during the next four years.
Anyway, it's the success of Republican propaganda internally and its rejection externally that is most ominous. With this result, the US (though "Disunited States" seems more accurate) has clearly, if narrowly, endorsed its own desire to rule the world.
This is not simply about a hawkish response to terrorism. It's a much more elaborate project than that.
Still, knowledge is power. We now know the proportion of Americans who have chosen an ultra-right wing, big-business theocracy to lead them. That these people chose to endorse the invading of sovereign countries at will (killing 100,000 Iraqis!), the sabotaging of global institutions and essentially trampling over the rest of world is not just their business. It's ours too.