We WON. It's OUR COUNTRY. Two days on, I'm relieved at the outcome, if not still slightly giddy at the smackdown handed to the ideals of Karl Rove and his bubble-inhabiting followers. Feels good, to me, to spit in the eye of that bastion of hatred, that beacon of inequality, that smug toad puffed up with his own pseudogenius -- Karl Rove got handed a smackdown, on national television, night before last nearly as epic as the one Rupert Murdoch got when Faux Noise had to call Ohio for President Obama, and therefore the election...
oh, and all that money the Kochs threw down? Yeah, that's flushed. Not undeservedly. Kinda sweet that math beats baloney, isn't it?
Pretty good feeling, being able to be proud of my President again. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. Voted for 'em, worked for 'em, prayed for 'em -- not just to win, but to be safe on the job. Didn't have to pray they'd do the right thing, 'cause they mostly just did that by default, except when they couldn't 'cause the structure of the country is such that they've got to get people aboard who loathe everything they stand for to get stuff done. Which is the heart and soul of the challenge.
Where do we take it from here? Y'all hop over the Orange Itzl-Print with me ...
...here we stand, having re-elected Barack Hussein Obama to be the 44th President of the United States of America, and Joe Biden to be his Vice-President, right-hand man, and happy warrior.
Now that we can prove we can stand, where do we go? Collectively, American voters spit in the Tea Party's eye Tuesday. THIS IS OUR COUNTRY TOO. YOU CANNOT FORCE US BACKWARD.
Where are we going? We're going forward. We're going to an America we envision, a future we deserve.
We're going beyond the big lies -- the really big, huge, giant, overweening, bully-borne lies force-fed us for years. We're blowing past the falsehoods that money is speech, that greed is good, that corporations are people, that collective bargaining destroys jobs, that stock-markets rule the universe. We're running down the notions that women shouldn't have control of their own bodies, that our children and grandchildren don't deserve a safe school, good teachers, an outstanding education for free just because of where we live, that what determines our human worth is what we bank every year, that rape's just another form of conception, that our Social Security insurance benefits are an entitlement we've never earned, that work doesn't equal capital in value and working people don't matter as much as stockholders, that complicated financial instruments can be used to throw people out in the street, that fraud works, that discrimination's fine, that "conscience" trumps patient rights, that some Americans deserve less because of where they live or what jobs they hold or who they love.
Forward -- that's where we have to go. Not just you and me. Not just Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Not just Senator Warren, Congressman Grayson, Justice Sotomayor. All of us. It ain't over yet -- yeah, we've done one big, hard thing. But we've got to do more, to reach the future all of us deserve.
Y'all comin'?