Thousands Say "Sorry" For Bush Win

by Marty Logan

(IPS) -- Thousands of Americans are apologizing to the world for the millions of their fellow citizens who voted President Bush back into office Nov. 2.

More than six thousand people have sent photos displaying a written apology to the Internet site SorryEverybody.com, which has received over 70 million visits.

The site sprung up just days after the election and little more than a week later a response, ApologiesAccepted.com, appeared in cyberspace to welcome the gesture. That Europe-based site now counts 1,000-plus postings.

The two have elicited a number of counter-sites, including You'reWelcomeEverybody, which says its goal is "to counter those who would pathetically apologize for the Bush victory." It has nearly 200 submissions to date.

A random look through SorryEverybody's gallery of photos -- arranged 10 per Internet page -- finds people standing and sitting, most holding handwritten messages, others with hi-tech graphics superimposed on their pictures.

The messages include: "I'm so sorry. We really tried. Hang in there with us. He can't run again"; "Sorry, the next one's going to be an Austrian bodybuilder (referring to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger)"; and "Someday sanity will prevail -- hope we live to see it. Sorry, Redlands, California."

"We had been discussing the election, of course, in excruciating detail; we finally came to the conclusion that Bush was going to win it ... and well, I set about looking for something that would allay my feelings of total devastation," says SorryEverybody founder and spokesman James Zetlen.

"I thought it would be kind of funny to hold up a sign to a camera saying, 'Gee guys, our (mistake)'. Well I did," adds Zetlen, an undergraduate at the University of Southern California (USC). "And I suggested on this Internet community that it would be funny, that it would spark a worldwide movement to apologize -- that was my little joke."

"Well, it sort of did."

Hours after the website went online Nov. 4, USC officials pulled its plug, after the pages received more than two million visits, eating up 82 percent of the university's web server traffic.

"For some reason it was the kind of thing that everyone told their friends (about)," Zetlen told IPS from Los Angeles.

Today, after outgrowing a couple of private company's servers, SorryEverybody has found a home, where it gets about four million visits daily.

On ApologiesAccepted.com you find the same format of 10 photos per page, with messages including: "Lesley loves 49 percent of the United States. But she strongly believes that in the end, the other 51 percent won't be isolated from the rest of the world anymore."

"Stop killing babies in Falluja, Mr Bush. Shame on you 51 percent," reads another.

That harsh sentiment echoes the headlines of some newspapers around the world Nov. 3, including the UK Daily Mirror's, 'How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?'

But in general the tone of the Internet messages is sympathetic.

"It's absolutely intriguing, and quite an important example I think, where people are speaking to the rest of the world really and bearing testimony to the fact that what the U.S. government does is not supported by all of the people here," according to Jim Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum.

He likened the websites to past examples of international solidarity, like the abolish-slavery movement of the 19th century, and also compared them to the global anti-war marches prior to the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"It was astounding and apart from the odd mention, the press really didn't want to acknowledge how big it really was. We put on our website ... photographs of those marches and we've also covered all the big international protests that relate to economic issues," added Paul in an interview.

"These all brought people from many many countries together in actions of solidarity."

While applauding the initiative, one anti-war organiser says it is time for Americans who opposed Bush to dry their tears and get busy.

"There was all this energy poured into the election, and many people are really disgusted with the results and thinking of what four years of Bush means. Now, of course, is the moment for all that energy to come back and get pushed into organising and working on the issues that remain," Bill Dobbs, media coordinator for the 900-group coalition United for Peace and Justice, told IPS.

Zetlen says one of his goals in creating SorryEverybody was to launch a "civil conversation" among Americans and between his fellow citizens and other people worldwide. The appearance of You'reWelcomeEverybody and other initiatives proves he has not yet fully succeeded.

In fact, the U.S. election results demonstrate the growing divide between the world's superpower and the rest of us, says one observer. "But while America marches rightward, it fails to drag the rest of the world along with it. Indeed, most of the rest of the world is headed in the opposite direction," Walden Bello wrote Nov. 8 on the website Focus on the Global South.

"Nothing illustrated this more than the fact that in the very week Bush was re-elected, a coalition of left parties came to power in Uruguay; Hugo Chavez, Washington's new nemesis in Latin America, swept state elections in Venezuela, and Hungary served notice it was withdrawing its 300 troops from Iraq."

"Although the American Right is consolidating its hold domestically, it cannot halt the unravelling of Washington's hegemony globally," Bello added in the article, 'The Bush Victory, Falluja, and the Republican Right's Challenge to the Global Peace Movement'.