Well, let the grousing begin.

The Republicans have won control of both houses of Congress, and already I've heard Democrats blame it on Bush, on the media (I thought they were liberal), on the sniper (!), etc.

As someone who voted for Ron Kirk (D) for Senate, I simply want to say, stop your idiotic puling.

Call me an idealist, but I actually believe that democracy is one of the finest creations of humanity. And you know what? I think it works.

I don't think masses of brainwashed morons staggered to voting booths and ticked off the responses the media programmed them with. The people cast their ballots and chose their elected officials. To degrade their choices down to reactions to soundbites is to both belittle the American citizenry and the democratic process itself.

Snide cynicism sneers at the notion that people are actually smarter than we give them credit for. This same elitist snobbery gives rise to the notion that people aren't smart enough to govern themselves, and the corollary to that is that either an oligarchy or dictator knows much better what's good for the masses. Well fuck that. Democracy, I'm convinced, is the only way to go. And if you truly believe in democracy, then you have to have some fundamental trust in the people around you.

Personally, my take on the elections is that people didn't feel like the Democrats had any positive position on much of anything, that their entire platform was simply "We're not them." And I think it didn't fly. Democrats held up passage of the Homeland Security bill, Federal Judge appointments, and other decisions that seemed to be based purely on political in-fighting. And honestly, I think a lot of people were fed up.

Most Americans like to see gridlock, in the normal state of affairs, because they don't like giving Washington too much power. But we're not living in a normal state of affairs right now, and people want to see things get done (at least things like national security).

Now, I could be full of shit in my analysis, but whatever the reasons for people voting the way they did, the people spoke.

We knowingly, consciously, made our choices. If you don't like them, tough. Vote them out next time around. That's the way the system works, and if you have any kind of historical perspective you'll realize it's the best system there's ever been.