I have to admit to some degree of ongoing “stunned” by our election.

All along I was worried about the Clinton’s declaration that “he can’t win.” The Clinton’s are often right, particularly when it comes to politics. I was worried about the alleged Bradley Effect, I was worried enough of this country would want to fuck Sarah Palin to overcome her spectacular unpreparedness for the job of even VP, much less POTUS.

As the election came nearer, I found a little hope. I was watching Nate at 538 almost religiously, finding his model to be superior to most as a big fan of stats and math, and it was hard not to take Nate’s projections seriously. I thought, OH. I thought, PA, which the mainstream media had successfully convinced me MIGHT be in play. I thought hard about FL.

So when OH and PA came in, I was, more than any other emotion, relieved. I watched the rest with some sense of bloodlust, and FL and IN satisfied it. IN? VA. And a couple days later, NC.

Prop 8 in CA had a lot to do with my delayed emotional reaction to Obama’s election. I will never do anything but politely hassle them (LDS visitors) again, but I’ll do it with a little more edge. I’m actually looking forward to it. I love engaging those with whom I disagree, I (nearly) always do it politely, and I’ve always “religiously” supported the Invisible Sky Wizard of any individual’s choice. Have at it, and here’s to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

A day and two and three later, the international reactions started coming in, and I began to feel a slowly growing sense of what this election means. It’s hilariously underestimated how much “goodwill” can make a political difference, and right now Obama has the political capital for international cooperation not seen since Bush the Lesser pissed away 9-11’s.

Somehow, I don’t think Obama will blow it this time. The world wants to believe in us. Not The Man’s world, necessarily, but Average Joe’s everywhere, in all corners of the globe.

Without risking going all Michelle on you, I’m as proud of this country as I’ve ever been. This pride is still tempered by the tens of millions of votes McCain and Sexy Sarah got, not to mention the true fly in the ointment that was Prop 8, but history moves slowly, and the demographics are clearly on the correct side of this issue, among many.

I often compare social and political progress to the stock market, a sense of slow progress marked by fits and starts, booms and busts, but in the end your best bet over time. We are on the verge of a boom, if we just keep our leaders’ feet to the fire and become active participants in this great land of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Anne Rice had it right in her great third Vampire Chronicle, in which the “family of man” is an overriding theme. Here, the “good” vampires rebel against the Queen, who has been asleep for 5000 years or so, and wants to establish a new female-centric agenda.

The most human of all vampires speak at the epic council of serious vampires, addressing the Queen of them all who has shall we say, an old and tired ideology:

It is you who are arrogant,” she answered. “It is you who have learned nothing. It is you who have not changed in six thousand years. It is your soul which remains unperfected, while mortals move to realms you will never grasp. In your isolation you dreamed dreams as thousands of mortals have done, protected from all scrutiny or challenge (Ed: Again, sound familiar?); and you emerge from your silence, ready to make these dreams real for the world? You bring them here to this table (Ed: Lots of very wise vampires, who’ve been around since thousands of years BC, and have pretty much seen it all, around the table.), among a handful of your fellow creatures and they crumble. You cannot defend them. How could anyone defend them? And you tell us we deny what we see!”

…snip…

Well, I’ll tell you what I see,” she (Maharet) went on. “Six thousand years ago, when men believed in spirits, an ugly and irreversible accident occurred; it was as awful in its own way as the monsters born now and then to mortals which nature does not suffer to live. But you, clinging to life, and clinging to your will, and clinging to your royal prerogative, refused to take that awful mistake with you to an early grave. To sanctify it, that was your purpose. To spin a great and glorious new religion; and that is still your purpose now. But it was an accident finally, a distortion, and nothing more.”

And look now at the ages since that dark and evil moment; look at the other religions founded upon magic; founded upon some apparition or voice from the clouds! Founded upon intervention of the supernatural in one guise or another–miracles, revelations, a mortal man rising from the dead!”

Look on the effect of your religions, those movements that have swept up millions with their fantastical claims. Look at what they have done to human history. Look at the wars fought on account of them; look at the persecutions, the massacres. Look at the pure enslavement of reason; look at the price of faith and zeal.”

And you tell us of children dying in the Eastern countries, in the name of Allah as the guns crackle and the bombs fall!”

And the war of which you speak in which one tiny European nation sought to exterminate a people…In the name of what grand spiritual design for a new world was that done? And what does the world remember of it? The death camps, the ovens in which bodies were burnt by the thousands! The ideas are gone! (Ed: Except for the war-monkeys.)

I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil–religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the elegant simple abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively to its knees.”

Don’t you see? It is not man who is the enemy of of the human species. It is the irrational; it is the spiritual when it is divorced from the material; from the lesson of one beating heart or one bleeding vein.”

The “idea” she references here refers to “ideology” to me; there are none that are pure and good. Life is a crazy mix of ideas, good and bad, and an even crazier mix of the realities of day-to-day life. The variables are infinite, and cannot be addressed by dogmatic assholeitutude. It is “reason” that marks the progress of Mankind, in every single way. Paying attention to facts, and science, and yes even art and literature, reflections of the culture, will pay off in the long run.

And today I see film of Obama dropping his beautiful children off for school, casually dressed and wearing a White Sox hat, and the Obama’s visiting the White House, and it hit me.

We have a chance, and a good one if we do it well. We elected the best candidate, and I hope and yes, pray in my own strange way, that the McCain voters give the man a chance. We have some big problems to solve, and I think we got the right guy for the job.

I don’t think my country is always right. Quite the contrary. But love is about forgiveness, and acceptance, and moving forward with the good in mind instead of the bad. And right about now, I love my country as much as I ever have.

We did good. Now let’s start the job.