Monday, November 10, 2014

So It Happened And It Was Bad. No Quitting Now.

It's been almost a week since the mid-term elections and you may or may not have noticed that this space has been empty.  Deserted.  Lights out.  Nobody home.

It wasn't because I'm chicken about expressing how I feel about what happened last Tuesday.  That's not it.   I kept trying, but I honestly had nothing coherent to say about it.  I wrote an entire blog post on Wednesday morning and almost hit the "Publish" button before I realized that it was nothing but one big whine.  A total waste of time.  We didn't just lose an election, we lost in such a devastating, humiliating slam-dunk of a rout, I felt as if I have been physically beaten.  I couldn't catch my breath, it hurt so bad.  The only thing I could think to do was to lay low and do nothing.

It worked out that there were other things going on in my life that distracted me enough so that going off the deep end wasn't an option.  For the first two days I deliberately stayed away from the blame games, the prognosticating, the clueless reporting of the results--as if it wasn't the worst thing in the world that the Republicans skunked us.  All across the country.  The undeserving bastards SKUNKED US!!!!

But, okay. 

I was not the only one to take the loss personally.  A whole lot of cussin' going on out there.  And blaming.  Mostly at the Democrats who apparently let this happen, either by choosing bad candidates, by running hopelessly out-of-touch campaigns, or by being pseudo-Democrats who pretended they cared but didn't feel the need to actually go out and vote.

For once it wasn't Obama's fault, it was the fault of the Democrats who moved away from Obama in order to have a chance at winning in Obama-hostile states.  Unless you believe it was Obama's fault for not giving those Dems reason enough to want to include him in their quest, as representatives of his party, to win a seat on the Democratic side.

There is plenty of blame to go around and all of the principals deserve a portion of the flak, but the bottom line is that the Republicans are now in charge of everything but the executive branch of our government, and the big unknown is how the executive branch will handle it.  The truth is, President Obama doesn't follow a predictable path.  He doesn't even follow a Party path.  He is the epitome of the Big Unknown.  Will he now suddenly become our 21st Century FDR?  I wish.  But no, he won't.

Will the Republicans suddenly come to their senses and realize they have two years to attempt to fix the damage they've already done, hoping that by 2016 we'll forget that they're the enemy and give them a chance at owning the entire government?  No to the first part but yes to the last.

I want to quit.  I'm tired and mad and demoralized and hurt.  But it's like voting.  If I stay home, deciding my vote won't count, it won't.  If  I decide my voice won't count, it won't.  My singular voice doesn't count, but if I add it to the thousands of others who can't and won't give up now, we might just make a difference.

It's the hopeless optimists the Republicans have to fear.  We've always been their undoing.


6 comments:

  1. I had the same reaction, and I find that I'm still mostly staying away from political blogs and discussions. I'm not quitting either, but I need a break and need time to regroup. Don't you worry...we live to fight another day!

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  2. I'm still not into it full swing. I'm too angry and too disgusted And still not believing it could happen after all we've been through.

    But the fact that so many voters felt the same way and didn't vote got me thinking I had to get back out there in the ring. I'm still taking baby steps, though, and staying away from the really nasty stuff--especially from our side.

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  3. I spent a few days sulking after the initial shock and disappointment. Then I began to see that really, for now at least, nothing had changed and it was only a matter of time before the Republicans eat each other alive and a few Democrats with spines emerge. The world as we knew it has changed, but the change has been coming incrementally and some of us simply didn't want to believe what we were seeing. I think our president has a trick or two left and will have a strong showing over the next two years. A lot of vetoes (I hope!) and then some pardons that are well deserved and positive.

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  4. It was good I had a holy day (Samhain) to prep for and guests staying to distract me as I noted the election results. I feel in a fair state of despair -- I mean, really, I look at what the GOP untrammeled has done to my birth state and just shudder in horror. We all voted, wee drops of opinion in a miserable one third of all possible voters.
    I want to go out on the streets and ask " Did you vote?" and then whack the shit out of anuyone who answers "No."

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  5. I want to do the same thing to the people who DID vote and voted in the Republicans. People I know and care about did that, even though I did everything I could to dissuade them. They just wouldn't be convinced that the Republicans were that bad. They want to believe that both parties are equally bad so what difference does it make? I showed them over and over again how crazy that was but it meant nothing. Grrrrr..

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  6. Yeah, watching people buy the GOP propaganda is ....well, to call it "crazy making" is entirely too benign a phrase.

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