If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.~~Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin

The recent blowout election that gave us President Barack Obama resulted in a flood of emotion that engulfed both parties.   The one thing they had in common was that neither party could believe it.  Political comedian Mort Sahl once said, "Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen."  

If we have learned nothing else about Republicans, it's that, with few exceptions, they are vindictive, immoral, blood-thirsty, and just plain power-mad.  Republicans are so much better at destroying things than Democrats are. They say and do whatever it takes to win.  And if that doesn't work -- they seize it anyway.  

So we were braced for another disappointment -- not because we didn't share Obama's vision of change and his hope for a better life for all Americans, but because voting machines were frantically flip-flopping votes from Obama to John McCain, minority voters were purged, telephones jangling with robocalls smeared Obama as an alien terrorist -- and John King over at CNN kept ramming solid red "magic" maps in our faces as proof that McCain could not lose.

So, what happened?  

We woke up.  After snoozing through massive homicide, refusing to confront genocide, ignoring fratracide and the hopelessness that has driven an alarming number of our military to commit suicide...we woke up.  

We stood united against a national addiction to chaos, bloodshed and corruption.  We voted for a leader who promised to break that addiction, and to heal this nation in the name of the people.  By election night, we were giddy with relief.  We clambered aboard that ship of state and rode the wave of long-lost hope -- free at last.  Obama's win ripped a hole in the political air, and millions of us stood weeping as the blissful sound of Democracy wafted through every nook and cranny  to swirl around this magnificent moment in our history.

But that was election night.  Republicans, terrified of change, were in shock -- in total disarray.  But the next morning, they were out in force -- maggots streaming from rotten turds whose blossoms had been stomped on.