Everyone seems to have noticed the appalled reactions of Romney supporters on Facebook lately. They are quite shocked, appalled, and many genuinely fear for the future of the country.
I expect that to be mitigated to some extent by what I expect will be a rapid and complete deal to avoid the Fiscal Cliff before the end of the year. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened before Thanksgiving--but certainly well before Christmas.
It's certainly quite a remarkable political climate at the moment for anyone who seriously follows such things, as I do. Note that "seriously following" does not mean getting all (or any frankly) of your information from Fox News or AM talk radio. I'm talking about the millions of folks like myself who read the newspaper every day, and have done so for many years, and even occasionally watch PBS for serious analyses of things.
But with another four year mandate for the President, Congress understands that the best thing right now is to put on a show of bipartisanship in time for people to feel confident heading into the Christmas shopping season. Seriously, there are fairly falling all over themselves to do so, with only the de rigeur level of partisan speak.
Why they couldn't do this before was largely, in my opinion, because of Fox News, primarily, stirring up massive discontent among uninformed people who are simply not educated enough to distinguish News from Opinion, or Opinion with Sensible Opinion or even Logical Internally Consistent Opinion. I'm sorry, but it's true. The truth has no bias.
I think the logical disconnect between a lot of those poor folks expectations for the election and the actual outcome may have for the first time penetrated that barrier to understanding which is characteristic of believing everything Fox News says. There is a state of shock, and certainly fatigue. The country wants very much to move on, and I'm hopeful that a lot of Fox News addicts may wake up and smell the roses. Folks, it's not as bad as all that. Or if it is, it's not in the way they're telling you!
You see, I find the whole political circus to be a distraction for the people as well. This predates Fox News and exists independently of it as well. For example, I consider global warming to be the single (of many) biggest threats to humanity, but how many times was it mentioned during the campaign? Because it's not a part of the political parlance of the moment, it was ignored, and thus we continue blithely hurtling along the path to self destruction.
I'm hoping Obama and Congress can do more than avert the Fiscal Cliff of their own devising, and actually start trying to do some good for the people.
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