What the hell do we do now?

Sackcloth and ashes.  Weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Head up into the hills or down into the bunkers.  Flee the country.

Seriously, we suck it up and go to plan “B”  This election has been one hell of an experience, and as my uncle Billy Ray jim Bob says, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

I’m not going anywhere, at least not until they haul me off to Gitmo.  Blogging is what I have in place of a life.  But the rest of you should relax and get reacquainted with your spouses, significant others, secret lovers, children, parents, pets, friends, neighbors and employers.  Turn off your television, open a book, take a vacation, have an affair, but do something! 

Things will slow down around here for a while, but that’s normal and to be expected.  This is a political blog, and we just had our Super Bowl.  Today starts the off-season but there will always be stuff to talk about.  First there will be the final results wrap-up and post-mortem stories.  Then we’ll get to discuss the transition and the last days of the Cheney – Bush administration.

On my mom’s birthday The Lightbringer will be inaugurated, and he will enjoy a honeymoon period that will last until the first scandal, crisis or major misstep.  I’m gonna predict a very short honeymoon, because we have lots of potential scandals and serious problems waiting in the wings already.

Over at Cannonfire Joseph Cannon has a good post-mortem post prognosticating the problems for PUMA in the post-election period (say that five times really fast):

We may enter a period in which the only interesting writing will appear on the PUMA blogs.

Yes, PUMA sites will lose readers during the period between election and inauguration, and for some little while afterward. But the contrarian sites that survive could one day seem cooler than cool and hipper than hip.

Here’s the big problem: PUMAs need to keep their attacks distinct from the Republican attacks.

[…]

The task of the PUMAs will be to keep the heat on the Lightbringer without falling into the trap of conspiranoia.

The COLB controversy gave us a foretaste of how things will play out. I still recall the emails I received from Susan at No Quarter. The basic thrust of her messages came to this: Why are you insisting on proof? If it hurts Obama, it’s gotta be good. Yup, it’s good even if it’s crap. The 9/11 nuts once sang a similar song. Many of them privately told me that I should parrot the CD theory even if I did not believe it, because it hurts Bush. Hurting Bush was all that mattered.

We now live in an age not of The Truth but The Narrative. The question is no longer: “What are the Facts?” but “Which side are you on?” Or: “Which reality makes you feel better?”

[…]

It’s all so bloody predictable.

But such is our new world: The only thing that matters is the Narrative, and fuck the facts.

Which brings me to my post-election wishes for the PUMA-folk. May they survive, may they prosper, may they remain liberal (not “progressive”!), may they remain open to new and unusual ideas, may they continue to write the other way when handed a sheet of lined paper, may they speculate freely without mistaking speculation for proof — and may PUMA-land be the last place in America where people still care about facts.

One of the most disturbing things this past year (there are several) was the complete abandonment of principles, ethics and respect for the truth by so many members of Left Blogistan.  If we PUMAs are to have any relevance in the future we must firmly adhere to liberal principles and ideals, including, but not limited to, honesty, objectivity, equality, fairness and logic. 

We can, however, still be foul-mouthed bloggers who say “fuck” and other dirty words.