If You Bought It, You Own It

Whatever there is to say about liars and why they are believed, or those aspects of Russian interference in the election we know about or suspect--stealing emails, feeding them to the media, possibly microtargeting propaganda to specific voters identified by voting lists they stole--there is still the individual responsibility to defy the lies, learn the facts, discern the long-term implications of your vote.

But in 2016 a lot of American voters didn't.  That a majority didn't vote for Homemade Hitler and that he got installed on the basis of a few thousand votes in a handful of states, seems to mitigate.  But it doesn't.  Especially because in district after district, and state after state, enough voters installed reactionary Republicans, either by their votes or by not voting.  They kept the Senate and they did what they did today.  They kept the House.  They've got statehouses and governors galore, enough to gerrymander the future.

So once again you may weep, because you bought it, and now you own its dangerous fragments.  You own a reactionary Supreme Court into the foreseeable future. And in general you own a foreseeably grim future due to what's being done and not done to the environment and on addressing the climate crisis, as well as health and financial protections and emergency efficiency.

Even I was ready to toast our luck in surviving the first hundred days without cities in smoldering ruin, or a military dictatorship building in parallel to a new war.  But those hundred days aren't up for another few weeks, and the signs are growing.  Syria?  North Korea?  Both?

There may be reasons for the electoral outcome.  There are no excuses.  You--Democrats, Republicans, Bernie people and other self-styled 'revolutionaries', media and voters-- you bought it when it was obviously going to explode, it bragged it was going to explode. Now you own it.