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Today, the Washington Post ran a long, luxurious backrub of a story about a hard-right conservative Romney supporter. The woman in question, upon confronting the evidence offered by the election that gay people are people, rape is rape and Fox News doesn’t tell the truth, feels that the country is lost.
I agree with the sentiment, but for different reasons. The woman in the Post story believes the country lost everything last Tuesday. I believe we didn’t win very much. We both think America has lost its way. The America she voted for is gone, filed in the dustbin of history and demographics and the inevitable tide of expanding rights. The America I voted for is gone, too, cast aside in a 21st century bent on expanding the rights of corporations while making sure the president can legally have a kill list without anyone arresting him for murder.
She mourns an America that will never return. The America I mourn is not lost forever, not yet, and I mean to do something about that. I intend to spend the next four years jumping up and down on every elected official within reach to see that the horrid contra-constitutional excesses of the last 12 years are put right. In the article I wrote after the election, I concluded by saying, “All we won on Tuesday night was the outside chance of not losing. What is made of that very slim margin is entirely up to you.”
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