Editor:

Red-state America, we Blue voters are sorry to say that it's time for a divorce. We've tried staying together for the sake of the children, but it's too late for that now.

We'd prefer the no-fault route. The trial separation in the 1860s was too devastating to repeat, so let's settle this amicably. We'll let you visit the Pacific Ocean and the Smithsonian without a passport if you'll let us visit the Grand Canyon and Orlando. Your Democratic voters are welcome to move to our new, Scandinavian-style nation.

If you insist on contesting the grounds for divorce in court, however, we will claim irreconcilable differences. In our view, you have voted in someone who sunk us in record debt, mired us in a disastrous war that increased the threat of terrorism, replaced scientists with religious extremists, let torture in America's name go unpunished, invited corporations and the super-rich to write their own tax loopholes, and turned our environment over to big business.

No doubt you too have a viewpoint to explain your actions, but it has become more and more incomprehensible to us. This mutual incomprehension alone is grounds for divorce.

Too often a family tragedy splits the survivors apart. All of us, Red and Blue, love this country, and all of us grieved for the American lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. Why couldn't that tragedy have brought us closer together instead of breaking us up?

BETSY LEONDAR-WRIGHT, Arlington, Mass.