After these debates, the choice will be clear. It won't be an easy one for a lot of sick people. There are profound and refractory forces in all of our psyches that drives us toward death, toward self-degradation, toward the elevation of corpses into figures of our own desire to be dominated.

But there are other forces that drive us toward getting up and trying not to die. We too often stifle these forces out of shame. We feel we don't deserve to live, and that our desire to live is something to hide. But the desire demands satisfaction, and sometimes gets it.

Kerry is giving Americans a choice. He is giving us the opportunity to say together that our country is filled with people who are unashamed of their own wish to be free. He is giving us the chance to say that our lives matter more than the corpses we are being asked to worship.

There is a deep connection between the corpse that is the Republican nominee for President and the corpses killed by the terrorists and on the Iraqi battlefield. Both receive the compulsive respect of people who cannot respect themselves, who do not have the courage to say that they themselves are really alive and therefore deserving of honor.

A vote for Kerry honors the living population of this country. This country deserves honor. But only if it has the courage to honor itself.

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To state the obvious about Friday night: Kerry was assured, earnest, and appealing. He relied calmly on the the authority of his well-earned belief in himself. Bush was shrill, petulant, and stupid. His only achievements were keeping his lips straight and keeping himself from attacking Charles Gibson.

The whores' claim that Bush's performance was better than last week's, and that the debate was therefore a draw, are completely irrelevant. The impact of Bush's eye-tics, his laughter at his own jokes, and, most importantly, his whiny imploring querulous dementedly shrieked pleas--the impact of all of these will be deep and probably unchangeable.


UPDATE: You may have heard about the Gallup poll showing that the debate was a draw, with 47 percent of viewers saying Kerry won, and 45 saying that Bush's attempt to scream away his own castration was highly persuasive. But the poll oversampled Repugs. See Gallup's own breakdown: among independents, Kerry crushed Bush, just as he did last week, 53-37.