Looks like I'm not getting much joy out of this election.

I mean, I'll hold out a faint sliver of hope until Kerry actually goes ahead and concedes, but...

It's very frustrating...the Democrats did so many things right in this election. Kerry wasn't necessarily the most charismatic candidate or the most fiery orator we could have picked, but he campaigned fairly well. He did well in the debates. Voter turnout was way up, which conventional wisdom said would favor Kerry.

I don't know...this election confirms my basic feeling that America is split essentially 50/50 into two ideological camps which increasingly do not percieve the same reality. (One thing that depressed me very much from the exit poll data was that a very large majority of people who said that "honesty" was an important quality in a candidate voted for Bush. I'm just boggled.)

Of course, everybody makes this observation, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. My vision of reality seems obvious to me. How do I go about explaining the obvious to someone who can't see it? For that matter, how do I make sure that I'm not just as deluded as I think they are?

Grmph. And to top off the season of election non-joy, the one proposition that I really wanted to see pass more than anything else, the three strikes limitation proposition, didn't pass. I guess the chance to do something humane and enlightened in the criminal justice system while saving the state of California a righteous boatload of money wasn't enticing enough for a majority of voters.

The thing that's saving me from total despair is the news, heard from a coworker, that the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan has found very good evidence of liquid water on Titan. It's got liquid water, it's got organics - it's an excellent bet for finding extraterrestrial life.

And not even a second Bush term can change the fact that that is really fucking cool.