[Updated: 11-10-4]

Stop. Just stop it.

I'm seeing anguish, disbelief, anger and calls for retribution even out there. (Hey, we all get stupid or morose when our hopes get crushed sometimes. There wouldn't be a Nina Simone or Tammy Wynette, otherwise.)

But one thing I can't abide is the trashing of the people who voted for Bush out there in red country. To those cursing the darkness, a candle...

Please, broaden your understanding of what's at work here.

Dirty tricks, lies, whatever, aside, 51% of the country picked a guy who is provably inept but mumbles words and themes that resonate with them and their hopes and fears.

When your product or joke or script or song does not move people, you have definitively missed something somewhere. You have failed. It may be their fault for only giving it half their attention, the concept may have been killer, a masterwork in your mind, but if they don''t stop, look, listen, and respond positively you have still failed. Calling consumers stupid does not make them more loyal to you. Calling faith and spirituality irrelevant does not win over people who see it as a practical part of their lives.

Artists speak of spirituality, craftspeople speak of the divine in their work, Einstein believed in God. The metaphysical is the glue for many.

Anthropologists agree that a spirtual sense is prevalent through the ages for a reason: it's a coping tool; it's necessary to cultural stability; it offers benchmarks. If it didn't have utility beyond its obvious imperfections, it would have been selected out of the gene pool.

The growth of theocrats and Democrats' continued failure is an easy one to rectify, and it stems from a simple saying: There are no atheists in foxholes.

As we are becoming more modern, more "progressive" technologicaly and socially, more and more people are feeling unmoored. They worry the future does not need them or want them. It does not look particularly welcoming.

So they fight it, and they cling to the only thing they feel doesn't, won't and shouldn't change: Their faith, their spirituality. And they cling to leaders who bind them together, even with fear, but who do it with the only words and reference they can trust: Words of faith, themes of values, assurances that not everything old and familiar has to die.

Just as Muslims don't "hate us for our freedoms," but rather, fear us because of our freedoms and because of our power to assert our "alien" interpretation of these universal values upon them via media, products, or force so too do many American people of faith fear todays turbocharged Jeffersonian Liberalism. They see a progress that is value-free, or rather, a progress that values change for change's sake, money, hype, sex, individuality over community, personal freedom over family bond. They hear Science *or* Spirituality, not both/and.

Why are these these things becoming more acutely known and politically potent? Well, because they're true. They feel like an assualt without the comfort of context, without a simple, resonant and sustainable answer to the question: Where is all this taking us? Why should we go? How is the journey and the risk going to make us more whole? Better?

Absent a tank for the journey, a collective persona they can climb into for protection, they'll take the foxhole and stay just where they are, glowering at those who want to jump in, or those who want to update the furnishings. In this truth lay opportunity for Democrats because "foxholes" are inherently not who We are. Or, where we can sustainably exist....



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A lady. About liberty. She is America's collective persona, a tank with a torch, chock full of thematic and iconic meaning--not a list of wedge issues. Democrats lose because they've abandoned the metaphysical and iconic meaning of what they, and this country, are about. To observe recent history, you would never know that Conservatism has been traditionally known as a selfish, pinched and sour worldview. It is pessimism--fear of loss, fear of other, fear of change--the status quo, defined.

You know what? The Democratic single mother in Pittsburgh wants to know why she flops down on the couch at midnight, having stumbled through yet another day with no time for herself, no time to regain her sanity. She sees few benefits to the progress ad guys like me tell her she should be enjoying. Wanna know another thing? That woman in Pittsburgh has a Republican counterpart in Boise. Same feelings, same sense of soulless disconnect in this "New American Century" that causes her to ask "When does the *good* future begin?" The connection is easy if we look past the bumper sticker.

They say money can't buy us love or happiness. It's true. It's also a subtle way of reminding us that what matters is metaphysical, not what we can touch. So strong is that urge, that truth, that when the real thing is not available, we take what we can get.

Faith, hope--and that's that's all faith is: hope in the face of the uncertain--they matter. And, like it or not fellow Democrats, they are first principles, and they have a lexicon. It's a language we've grown uncomfortable with through its misuse by others, but it represents feelings 8 out of 10 of us admit to sharing. And you did not mind when Barack Obama pressed it into service of his ideas. You know the result when Bill Clinton pressed it into service of all our ideas. Or King. Or Kennedy. When you heard them speak, you know that hair on the back of your neck sometimes stood at attention. Do you know why? The force of compassion, collective conscience. A shared spiritual sense and moment. The ultimate power of polis. A bonded future.

On Tuesday, a slim majority of the country set aside their practical complaints and financial burdens, and voted for a man who, in all likelihood, will do little to improve their practical lot, but who put authentic voice to their worries about a bonded future. To them, that is leadership. Not "fixing things," or artful prose, but voicing and trying. With his language and it's clarity, he reminds them why they trust, despite his failures, because he remembers what matters to them. He makes their hair stand up.

But he does not have the franchise. Because they are feeling people first, then Americans, then Republicans.

This country, these voters, they're not hard to understand. But it is impossible if fact is your only ambition.