I wanted to post this morning but Blogger wouldn't cooperate. I took the afternoon off - the cold lingers on, mutating into various afflictions every day or so, not really getting worse but not getting better. I woke up today without a voice. Haven't had a decent night's sleep in days, either. I need to go take a nap.

I've been reading various commentaries on Tuesday's debacle, one of the finest from Kerstin. She's one of my heroes now.

Jane Smiley on the unteachable ignorance of the red states, pointing out that this isn't a new and disturbing de-evolution of our society. We've always had an enormous population of morons who thump the Bible and live in invincible, unteachable ignorance, they just didn't get herded into voting booths this efficiently in the past. And we didn't reach them because we spoke of things they can't understand.

Economic issues don't worry them, because they don't understand how it affects them, so the stupefying financial mess Bush is creating for all of us to bear for decades to come is a non-issue to them. Our country's tarnished image in the world doesn't bother them, their worlds are very small and sheltered, the rest of the world exists for them only as background scenes on television. Even though it's their kids who will go to Iraq, not the kids of the chickenhawk leaders they worship, they are okay with that because in their invincible ignorance they still think Saddam Hussein had some connection to 911, so they believe they're somehow protecting America from terrorism and will sacrifice their kids to the greedy and incompetent chickenhawks running this endless slow-motion train wreck of a "war." Their president wouldn't LIE to them! It simply doesn't compute in their minds. The outsourcing of high-paying and high tech jobs doesn't matter, they don't have the education to get jobs like that anyway. It's someone else's problem. Health care? They were so brainwashed by the lie that Kerry was proposing "socialized medicine" they didn't even bother listening to what he really said. In fact, that's the bottom line for the entire election - brainwashing works. Repeat lies often enough and shrilly enough in the right ears, and they no longer have the capacity to hear anything else. Those ugly, vicious and incredibly stupid attack ads from the Bushies worked their magic - gotta give them credit, they know how to push the right buttons on the right people. They played to the lowest common denominator, and it worked. The endless beating of the drum about terrorism and the manufactured "morality issues" like a ban on gay marriage were a bigger draw for this crowd than the economy, health care, or even the war. The ignorant came out in droves and voted on their prejudices and their fears, not on the facts or the major issues, and we all must live with the consequences.

William Saletan offers a rational way to reach them, maybe, in terms they could understand, maybe, if they are reachable at all, and the jury's out on that. Judging by the random sampling of these people on KR, I don't hold much hope.

As for the subject of politics on a knitting blog - this one is going to have political content whenever the hell I feel like it. If you don't like it, don't read it.

And now I will go sit my tired ass on the couch, turn on a movie and knit something soothing - I'm torn between the laptop sweater and the top-down cardie. Maybe I'll alternate and make progress on both. The weather is lovely this weekend, 70s during the day, 50s at night, sunny, low humidity - I hope I finally shake this cold enough to get some of my energy back. Good sleeping weather tonight should help.