I tried to sympathize with the "mourning Romney" pics. And failed. [View all]

[DirkGently]

Gloating is not an appropriate reaction for the party and people who regard themselves as the sane, rational, adults in the political room.

So, when I went to the "White People Mourning Romney" aggregations and looked at the pictures, and saw older women in tears, children seemingly crushed, families embracing each other, I couldn't laugh at their pain. They weren't faking anything. They believed, as they believed four years ago, that something terrible and incomprehensible had happened to their country.

But as I continued to scroll down and saw the tweets from the likes of Victoria Jackson, saw the store closed in protest, the utterly disingenuous threats to leave the country for "Australia," sympathy segued into confusion.

What, exactly, ARE these people feeling? Or more accurately, what are they THINKING? Obama has been in office for four years. Satan has not appeared. We have not been herded into Stalinist camps. "Sharia law" has not been imposed. And yet they went right back to apparent visions of apocalypse under whatever kind of crypto-villain Obama supposedly is this week as though nothing had happened since 2008.

None of them -- not one -- expressed a single genuine critique of an Obama policy, or articulated how Romney or any Republican, would have done something better. How could they, when Romney himself relied on attacking healthcare reform modeled on one he enacted as Governor of Massachusetts, and promised spending increases and tax cuts AND deficit reduction, while refusing to say how that is possible?

None of them defended the insane Republican platform on women's rights. Or the war-mongering toward Iran. Or the bloody 4% in additional taxes the rich may someday have to pay if the Bush cuts are actually allowed to expire as they were intended to do.

Instead it was same, willfully idiotic blather. "Socialism and Marxism," from people who wouldn't know either if it bit them on the liver. Cries about God and freedom and the Constitution in the vaguest possible terms.

NOTHING. They have literally nothing to point to, except their own willful ignorance, painfully transparent racial panic, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of entitled dismay that simply yelling and jumping up and down did not bring victory.

So I landed at last at anger and, sorry to say, contempt. This election did not happen because of the media. Or Hurricane Sandy. Or even because of America's changing demographics and the Republican Party's determination to alienate every non "wealthy white male" in the country.

It happened because Republicans made a stand on being irrational. On relying on identity politics most politely described as tribalism. On social and ecomonic absolutism flying directly in the face of every known fact.

They chose to believe they were entitled to win based on monolithic opposition and bulletproof resistance to any fact-based discussion, compromise, or generosity of spirit. They would simply stand in the corner and shout insults until they got their way. And they did not.

Good. Cry, Republicans, cry. Get it out of your system. The world is not, in fact, what you wish it to be or what you claim it is. It is instead, what it IS. You cannot shout and threaten and pout your way into control.

We'll still be here when and if you want to work on our problems from the premise that a moderate, Hawaiian-born Harvard graduate who doesn't look exactly like you is not the anti-Christ, that tax cuts don't pay for themselves, wars are not our national sport, the climate is changing, and that women and their wombs are not your personal property.

Buck up, Republicans. The world is still here, just like it was four years ago. Hop on board. It's not as bad as you think. In fact, it's a little bit better than it was just a while ago.