The Day After

Remember, remember
This Fifth of November
The chaos that money hath wrought
I see no reason
The Koch brothers' treason
Should ever be forgot.

So there you have it. The triumph of the will (with no apologies to Leni Riefenstahl) of the moneyed people, of fearmongering over reason, of superstition over science, of media drumbeats of "don't bother voting, it's already decided" over active citizen engagement, of gerrymandering and voter suppression over fairness, and in great measure of strong-willed right-wingers who actually stand for things (as abhorrent as many of those things are to the rest of us) over weak-kneed supposed liberals who thought the best way to win the midterms was to distance themselves from the well-functioning policies of a president that other people told them was unpopular (but not nearly as unpopular as Congress!) and "move ot the center" - i.e., become second-rate Republican-lites - and really, why would anyone vote for a faux Republican against an actual one? It's going to be a long two years of backward social movement... of course, for some of us it's been (with a few wonderful exceptions like the expansion of gay rights and marijuana legalization) almost 35 years of backward social movement. I'll be keeping my head low the next couple of years and hoping for the best... or at least mitigation of the worst.