The election is well over and done with.  Gracious was the loser in defeat; magnanimous the winner in victory.  As ever, the wheel of history turns and so we look toward a new day, a new administration, while behind us, possibly stuck in a ditch, is history’s by-blow, the man who would be president had a few million people seen things the other way.

For the losers, the exhaustion and acceptance of defeat has past.  Now is the time for passing blame, looking to were it all went wrong, and figuring out why so many of one’s fellow citizens liked that other guy so much more.  Those inside the campaign have leveled their sights at the running mate, the great white hope from the great white north.  Oh, she was ignorant, they lament, she was uncultured, the cry, she spent too much time shopping, they whisper.  But the more honest among them know to look inward.  For it was not she, a simple woman of simple means and great ambition, who put her name on the ballot.  No, she was picked by professionals, men and women who should have known better but who, in there desperation, dug deep into the playbook for something, anything, that might lead to victory.  So they told their candidate, that they knew better, that he could have competent people in his cabinet, but first he needed to win.  Yes, he had to listen, because he wanted it, and these were the same people who crushed him in South Carolina all those years ago, they knew the playbook, knew the base, and they had won with fools before. 

And the base, oh sweet base, ever reliable, ever pliant.  Sell them outrage, offer them weddings to dogs and dead babies, all the while winking coyly to commerce and the stodgy side of center and you will win.  This was real America, so long as rest of America didn’t go to the polls. 

But they didn’t know, couldn’t know, that fruits of their politics were coming ripe, that at the end of the day policies bear fruit, and it was sour.  All of a sudden, nobody had any money, had any prospects for borrowing any money, or any way to make any money.  Suddenly the rest America got interested, started giving a shit, and not in that fiery over earnest undergraduate way either.  We got tired of real America’s deliberate stupidity; it’s bellicose jingoism and xenophobia, the foolish demagogues that served as figureheads for the democratic destruction of what had once been a perfectly functional government.

But it’s not enough to say we won and to go back to our old apathy.  Oversight is needed, and we the people have a responsibility to provide it.  So pay attention to what the new powers do.  Call bullshit when you see it, and remember that we put them in charge.  It’s time to be a boss America.