Hope Abides

There is always hope.

1. Victory is most easily attained by breaking the will of the enemies. The facists (I use this term in its technical sense; read a dictionary and you'll have to agree that's what the GOP has turned to) want to deny you hope, and their every effort is bent in that direction. Don't help them.

2. Polls based on landlines may be wrong; a solid get-out-the-vote effort could overturn the predicted return of the Know-Nothings to power in Congress and the subsequent two years of holding hearings on Obama's birth certificate, rather than on things that matter, such as global warming and jobs.

(If the Know-Nothings return to power, the people who will suffer the most are their own followers and I find rough justice in that; not hope per se but perhaps a little schadenfraude.)

3. Demographics. The GOP has come down squarely in favor of racist assaults on Hispanics, and this coupled with their history animus against blacks, Asians and Native Americans, are heading them toward minority status. Young people don't like GOP attacks on gays either. This effect has been masked by the domination of money in this election. Candidates such as Angle can outright refuse to answer any questions on matters of substance ... such as the foreign policy matters that are the special domain of the Senate ... because her allies run unlimited attack ads against her opponent, calculating that the loss of support among minorities will be offset by increased turnout among their fearful base. In the short run, they may be right but we whites will not be the majority forever.

4. Other nations will carry on our American ideals, as the United States dwindles in our domination of the world stage. In part this is an effect of the natural catching-up of everyone else, but it is also due to the squandering of the laborously accumulated wealth of the commons, built between the 1930s to 1980, by predators who accurately calculated that they could tap into that wealth, bit by bit. Perhaps when the predators have left our great nation a withered husk, they will move on to fatter targets and we can regain our freedom.

5. The human species is gaining in intelligence. I won't say individuals are, but as organizations we are vastly more able to share information and make informed decisions than ever before. This effect is masked as the aristocracy's privatized propaganda efforts are locally and temporarily successful but the species is learning.
Take, for example, the ACORN vs. Sherrod scandals. In both cases, faked video attempted to destroy good public servants to the advantage of the aristocracy. The first effort worked; the second failed (just barely) as the species, noting the earlier lie, investigated the new lie and squashed it before it did much harm. Now effectively everyone flags Breitbart's material as "unreliable"; he's still employable because "unreliable" is a positive qualification in many quarters, but only a fool would actually accept his word on any subject.

6. The human species is also gaining in emotional intelligence. The most important part of the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear is that the idea of sanity turned out to be very popular. Being afraid and unwilling to listen is not as popular as it once was.

There may be no way to persuade Beckists, who respond to poverty by saying "the poor should just find something to do", that this is an unrealistic attitude, fitting to a barbarian perhaps but unworthy of a civilization. The Know-Nothings can hurt our great nation badly, and will certainly try, just as they did in 1861 and 1929. But in the long run, they will fail, and the sooner if we respond to hostility not with more hostility, to fear with more fear; to violence with more violence; fearful angry violent people WANT a fearful angry violent response to confirm their POV.

So chin up! feel confidence, have a laugh.

There is hope.