Rhinocrisy

Echoing the tentative celebratory note sounded by Hedgehog, new poll on the right.

I just got home from the victory party of one of the few true liberals who took or kept office tonight. This was Chris Daly, a supervisor here in San Francisco, who uses hardball methods to keep business in check to labor and developers in check to those they could displace. He’s a capitalist who applies basic humanism to the process of wealth creation — something that has been lacking on the national stage for decades.

Meanwhile, on the cable teevee, liberals across the country are dancing to “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, blogging furiously and generally over-enthusing for the marginal victory by the less reactionary party in our national electoral contests.

Personally, I am thrilled to see that dirty tricks and November surprises didn’t break up all the Democrats’ momentum (though they might have wiped out a few house and senate seats). I am a partisan for fair play. But I’m not going to wet myself over the success of a bunch of imperialists over the more-ignorant-and rapacious imperialists to their right. Hell, I’m not even wetting myself over the victory of an avowed leftist just to the south. (You don’t think that’s close? Don’t forget that Nicaragua is closer to Texas than Texas is to Washington, DC.)

The thing is, revolution doesn’t happen because a few new faces sit in leather chairs in Washington. Revolution is inside each of us. And as long as 100 to 200 million people in the world’s richest nation think that money is the ultimate goal in life, that force solves problems and that the eternal salvation awaits those who impose the “Good” Book on others, I don’t think this country has much chance of becoming a force for good.

And changing those attitudes requires going out and talking — and more importantly, listening — to people. Something that the Democrats, to their credit, did some of in this campaign. I would like to be able to say the same of us bloggers.

update after a bit of sleep: Does this election validate the Naderite line from 2000, that having George Bush in office will take down the U.S. empire? Latin America, the Arab world and BRIC are all rebelling, and now there’s a Socialist in the Senate. Interesting.