The Sun

America gets the government for which it votes and then deserves.  Thank God for the blue Houses of the Massachusetts delegation with sterling senators and representatives and thank God for the President.  One hopes it is a veto proof Congress which I think it is.

Some good things occurred last night if one is a strong Democrat:  The concession speech of the charlatan carpetbagger Brown was ear music, the all blue Congress especially Seth Moulton in the Congressional 6th District whom I adore makes my love for Massachusetts stronger.  Watch Representative-elect Seth Moulton and help keep him in office. He is brilliant, his military record is spotless with two medals of valor, he is humble, and his Harvard academic record is excellent.  For the cameras (excuse the looksist comment) he is handsome!  He has it all and I call him Kennedyesque except he does not have the personal destructive baggage so many Kennedys had.

Two other good things: Republican governor Corbett of Pennsylvania was unseated and Mark Warner won the Senate in Virginia.  I am sure there are some more good things but I cannot think of them and, clearly, the bad at this moment with a 7 seat pickup by Republicans in the Senate and an increase of 12 Republican seats from 2010 in the House prevails.

A quote from NECN:

A majority of Americans who took to the ballot box Tuesday disapprove of Congress and of President Barack Obama, an initial wave of national exit polling suggests. Exit polls showed 54 percent of voters disapprove of Obama, while 44 percent approve. A whopping 79 percent of voters say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with just 19 percent saying they "somewhat" or "strongly" approve of the job performance of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Just 31 percent of voters say they believe the nation is headed in the right direction, versus 65 percent who say the country is on the wrong track.

How voters can disapprove of Congress so thoroughly and then elect more of those responsible for its obstruction and impotence I will never on planet earth know.  I can only conclude that the American memory is shorter than I ever before thought and its understanding of national history is perilously flawed.

Michael Moore in his documentary “Bowling for Columbine” tried to assess the difference in levels of violence between Canada and the US when Canadians possess just as many guns but the US death rate from them reaches the heights of Everest.  In his documentary "Sicko" Canadian single payer health care is reality.  His conclusion, I think, in part, was that Canadians have the feeling that government cares and its people care about each other.  They care whether one lives or dies, that it is not a sink or swim nation and in times of national peril they will unite.  Its neighbor to the south, us, has an Ayn Randian spirit of selfishness that courses through our body politic–almost tribal isolationist in nature.  It makes for a very violent, lonely and insecure nation where each of us plays a survival-of-the-fittest game and military might takes the place of social safety nets to protect us as there is little else that will.

Howard Zinn said change comes from the bottom up and Noam Chomsky asked me if there is an alternative to action.  No, I suppose there is not and the Nirvana election of 2008 showed good through people power can happen here.

We keep on going, play the ball where it lies and know there are decent people who, in our nation, care. As Little Orphan Annie the musical said: "The sun will come out tomorrow."  It has come out before in times of great national peril and we simply hope it will again but as President Kennedy said “God's work must truly be our own!”