YAPPIN' JAAP

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government,
is to live under the government of worse men."
- Plato


So the American midterm voting concluded with a kidney punch to the Democrats for emphasis. Everyone's jumping off the ship, getting onto bandwagons, checking immigration regulations for other countries, shrugging their shoulders, wringing their hands, oops! How the HELL did that happen? A Republican Guard of our own overnight. As if none of these poor bastards had a clue what was coming, just voted their consciences and whammo! Here comes another dollop of compassionate conservatism. With all the whining going on I'd have thought the Republicans were body snatchers who'd invaded the bodies of Democrats when they entered the voting booths and pulled the wrong levers. Somebody voted for the Republicans. And unless the country has formed a collective mambo line into the future of godfulness, guns, corporate gluttony and all its attachments, I'm not sure how it gets explained that in the end, the Republicans made the moves to glory and the Democrats paid a lot of money to watch. Where are all these Democrats?

When the presidential elections became a burlesque two years ago, people could still say, yeah, but we wuz robbed! After yesterday's elections, the shift is palatable. People are changing sides, shifting chairs, writing in their own grades while the substitute teacher is trying to stay in charge. Somebody voted Republican. A lot of somebodies. More than a majority.

More than a majority. I'm still digesting these products of combustion, these cauterizing morsels of calculations. So, there are more chucklehead bedlamites out there than I imagined. Then again, most Republicans I know are like quickly erupting skin rashes so I don't find myself hanging out with many. They must be out there though. In big numbers. Otherwise, I have to revisit the body snatchers theory. Embryo cloning of Bush family members for every state. I mean WHERE is the controversy? Democrats can't hide behind fixed elections any more. There's a majority out there waiting to cash in their tickets: The New Republican Express. Somewhere, someone screwed up their calculus.

Now we live with it. Now it hides under our beds, follows our shadows, rains on our parades, leaps out at us from around the corner and comes over to give us a little kick every once in awhile.

Maybe it's the old rope-a-dope theory of the Democratic Party: take punches for the next two years waiting for the Republicans to punch themselves out. They probably will. They will probably overreach their mandate, create an entertaining blend of chaos and doom and give the world a tremendous hemorrhoid they'll be scratching for the next two years if not longer. But this game, these bandwagons, these voters hanging on like Darwin chimps clinging to the back and forth swinging of gravity, have already begun their swing back.

These Democrats might not be such fools. Best to let the Republicans run the show right into cancellation. A Screw It Up Yourself manifesto for sycophants and dogmatists to follow into oblivion. Or how was it the head Bushspeak writer put it? Into the ashcan of history? See you at the pig roast.