After the shock — I thought the power of incumbency, if nothing
else, would keep the Senate for Republicans, even while losing the
House — you know what my first thought was? I felt sorry for
Democrats, more specifically for the elite-identified secular
liberals whose views so dominate news coverage, the academy, and
Hollywood. Because without power, they’re nothing.
With my guys on the outs, I still get up, read my Bible, say my
prayers, and start my day as a Christian. I still have two sons who
love their Bible church Sunday school, and an older son who has
firmly decided on a military career, and is coherently beginning to
pursue that career. I have the best wife in the world.
The fundamentals of my world remain in place, exactly as they
were.
I will have to be firmer in my resolve to make my own world
apart from the government-defined society at large, and I expect
many of my fellow conservatives have been confirmed in this kind of
decision, too. We will have to forget public schools, for example,
just put them firmly behind us. As I have told more than one talk
show host, the liberal agenda for public schools will result in
those schools teaching my sons how to b**t f**k. No thanks.
My stock market portfolio will take some pulling back. Nancy
Pelosi has set her sights explicitly on the tax cuts that have
driven the current prosperity. If I read the recent movement of
markets correctly, the bullish gains of the last two days —
notably without big volume trading behind them — reflected a last
desperate hope that the Republicans wouldn’t lose too badly. Now
that that loss has taken place, I look for a selloff.
I had hoped to make a little more money before the end of the
year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now.
The thing I feel sorriest about? I grew up in a newspaper
family, three generations’ worth. The press started to get spoiled
by its overweaning excesses in pursuit of Nixon, and by Nixon’s
fall in the Watergate business. That behavior, however, pales in
comparison to the utter disgrace of journalism’s conduct toward the
Bush administration and toward America itself.
My once beloved institution, the world of Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur, of Will Rogers and H. Allen Smith and Ernie Pyle, has
been taken over by the likes of Jonathan Alter and Keith Olbermann.
It’s no joke that the most iconic news broadcast today is a joke,
the “Daily Show.”
But I’m still me, and thank heavens for the Internet. Guard it
well, mes amis. For a while, it may be all we have
left.
Look for an accelerating population shift over the next two
years, as more and more disgusted conservatives leave liberal
states. Look for a more polarized country — yes, even more. But
we’re still us, and Democrats, in power, are likely to overreach
and show us who they really are. We’ve got the best bench in
Presidential candidates, by far, and things will get better. It
won’t take long.
