In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.

A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry – who strongly supports that right – in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohioans expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions.

[…]

In Florida, Kerry again won only among voters under age 30. Six in 10 voters said Florida’s economy was in good shape, and they voted heavily for Bush. Voters also gave the edge to Bush’s handling of terrorism.

—Minnesota Public Radio: Kerry concedes; calls for national healing

Let me share some snippets from a MPR article on young voter turnout in Minnesota:

Unofficial counts suggest students turned out in significant numbers. The University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus had record turnout, 65 percent higher than in 2000. Overall in 2000, almost 400,000 18-29 year olds voted in Minnesota.

[…]

The man in charge of voter information at the U is Mike Dean. Throughout the day he trotted between the two polling places. He predicted record turnout early on. About 100 students were lined up at Coffman Union before the polls opened at 7 a.m.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. “Especially on a college campus, because quite honestly, a lot of students don’t get up early. They’re pretty much night owls. So for them to get up early is kind of unbelievable. But it also shows people’s passion about this election, and interest. I think that’s very exciting.”

[…]

Senior Scott Yilek, 21, says he voted for Kerry because he hasn’t been happy with President George Bush’s record over the past four years.

[…]

Student Mark Hoerr, 19, followed his parents lead when he cast his ballot for George W. Bush.

“I’m not that informed on politics. But just basically I thought he did a good job. My parents are more towards Bush, so they just kind of informed me and said that you know this is what he does, so I just kind of agreed with ‘em. He stands for less government,” he said.

—Minnesota Public Radio: What was the impact of young voters in Minnesota?

I think the last two lines really indicate what’s wrong with teenagers. If you are going to vote, you should at least take 10 minutes to learn the issues and think for yourself, not just blindly follow what mommy and daddy think you should do. Just my 2 cents.

There is a divide in this country today, miles wide and fathoms deep. It has cleaved our great nation, and has only grown — and will only continue to grow. But it’s not a left/right split, or Democrat/Republican one. It’s lunatic/non-lunatic.

Our culture has been swept along in a tide of emotionally-resonant, steadfastly anti-rational entertainment, and politics is at the head of the wave. The course of our country, the future of our people, is being determined by lizard-brain responses to images designed to trigger sub-rational responses.

Michael Moore and Ann Coulter aren’t opposed to each other, they are each other: determined propagandists, using the language and mediums best suited to strike at the emotional core of their audiences. They do not work from a common set of facts, and would ignore them even if they existed. When they speak well, they’re Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day. When they speak poorly, they’re a spittle-flecked wacko with an “End of the World is Nigh” sign. But that’s just a matter of presentation: they’re all lunatics, asking us to stop thinking and start feeling. And to start feeling what they want us to feel.

This determined emotionalism — which is another way of saying anti-rationalism — is what drives us today. You can find it distasteful, you can find it depressing, but it’s most important impact is that we have turned over the direction of the country — our future — to the part of our psyche that doesn’t want to think.

It’s not about smarts. The lunatics aren’t stupid — just the opposite. It’s about the willingness to abandon the deductive process in favor of epiphany. It’s about the abandonment of the brain in favor of the gut.

Jon Stewart has said all this, of course, and said it better. But it hit home, hard, because I recently discovered — realized — that I am not immune. I edged up against the lunatic side of the divide the past few weeks. I went — close, anyway — mad. I was angry, irrationally furious, to the point of raging at the world — appallingly, my children included — that things were going they way they were. I stared into the abyss, from the wrong side, and it scared me.

A potential reason for my brush has to do with how I spend my time: on the Internet. The Web is a festering cesspool of lunacy and emotion: Free Republic, Daily Kos, Little Green Footballs, Atrios, Instapundit, on and on and on. Facts only enter the picture when they’re favorable. Emotion rules. There is no common ground, nor a desire for any.

That’s a problem.

Left or right, Democrat or Republican, these labels don’t mean much in the face of the looming (or nearly complete) lunatic take-over. Dispassion and reason are qualities that need to be nurtured and promoted from every political viewpoint, even — or especially — in the face of spittle-flecked wackos.

The question is, where do we start?

—Greg Knauss