Crush All Boxes!

To anybody still reading this blog: it's time for me to sort of 'suspend' it. I'll probably still post occasionally, but knowing that no one will be reading it - blogs are 'publish or die'! I've realized that I've really been blogging for the election (how could one resist?). Now, I have to face the fact that I don't really have time to write, dangit. If it's not worth doing well....well, you know. Right now it's time for me to concentrate on making some of those ever-lighter dollars.

Anyway, the bad news is, Bush Tango'd his way into another term in office. The good news is, it's all on him. G-d punishes people by giving them what they ask for. Rather than make us feel cowed and demoralized, the election has merely pissed core dems/progressives off. The blogosphere is really becoming more aware of itself, is getting more spontaneously organized. It's soberly thrilling. I certainly don't feel demoralized, politically (the looming cultural problems are, er, more complicated).

The Democratic party obviously needs this sort of 'time-out'. We've forgotten that the GOP is paying us a backhanded compliment when they deride us as the 'establishment' or 'status quo' party - even as they beat us with it over and over: basic, inexorable progress is the status quo in the US. The US has historically been a vanguard kind of nation, down to its very constitution. W. Bush is able to do an astonishing amount and variety of damage in a short time - he has an actual genius for fucking up - but his lasting legacy will mostly be economic decline, I suspect. I'm not happy about it, but that's not everything. The Republicans - optimistic rhetoric aside - are what they are: conservatives, a force for a kind of social 'market correction'. Their power is an aberration; they are a natural minority. Our creaky old winner-take-all electoral process is still, unfortunately, a bit more 'republican' than democratic, but we actually eat at Jefferson's and Jackson's table. It's where we live. There is no real 'Republican Revolution', at least not yet. It's gut-check time now, though. If the, yes, Established Democratic party doesn't become a disciplined opposition party - one with the courage of its convictions and a belief in its natural trajectory, it will either be taken over by a very angry grass-roots, or simply dwindle away, to be replaced by something better. If Bush's Social Security gambit, 'Tort Reform' and Tax Program get more than a very few Democratic votes in congress in the coming 18 months or so, we've got a problem.

I know that once I hit 'publish' on this post, I'm going to think of a dozen things to blog about. But until I can figure out a way to do this periodically rather than closer to 'daily', I'll just see everybody in comment land. The blogosphere is starting to kick ass, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Thanks for stopping by.

# posted by jonnybutter @ 9:46 AM