Ugh. I feel flat-out sick today.

For once, I KNOW it's psychosomatic, and not stemming from an oncoming
migraine.

All I can think of is an excerpt from 1776, from a song that's
on the soundtrack, but is usually edited out when the movie is aired on
television. The song is "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men", and it's sung at
a point in time when the conservative members of the Continental
Congress are grouped together by themselves in the chamber.

Actually, the portion of the scene I have on my mind is a bit of spoken
dialogue that occurs between verses of said song. John Dickinson is
trying to convince John Hancock, who supports declaring independence
from England, to change his allegiance and support reconciling with the
King, stating that "History will brand Mr. Adams and his followers as
traitors".

"Traitors, Mr. Dickinson? To what? The British Crown, or the British
half-crown?"

"Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the
possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And
that's why they will follow us..."

[all resume singing]
"... To the right,
ever to the right,
never to the left,
forever to the right
And we'll hold
To our gold,
Tradition that is old,
Reluctance to be bold...".

That's pretty much what happened during the election last night... so
many of those states that are colored in with red today are populated
by people who think just like that smacked backside they voted for:
changing direction shows weakness, rather than learning from mistakes.
Stay the course, and who cares if the course is leading straight into
quicksand, because staying the course means we're strong.

They'd rather protect the "possibility" of becoming rich, because
they're apparently sated when the good economic news for Halliburton
stockholders comes through. It means that the economy is turning
around. Meanwhile their jobs are being shipped overseas, their
companies are going bankrupt, they're not seeing one freaking red cent
of the economic turnaround unless they were already part of that cool,
cool, considerate affluent minority, and they don't even REALIZE it.
Because they're proud of themselves for staying the course, you know.
It showed strength.

I hope we all have enough strength to deal with four more years of
continued unemployment woes, a national deficit that's enough to make a
sane person vomit, unmitigated envoronmental destruction, and an
ever-climbing death toll for our military and civilians in this morass
we caused by invading a sovreign nation.