Thursday, November 06, 2008

Electoral fallout

Yes, the tremendous probable increase in infanticide overshadows the civil rights victory we had this week, one that was almost anticlimactic for people too young to remember the 1960s. Yes, I was touched to see Jesse Jackson's emotional reaction to Obama's election, as well as disappointed that it had to be Obama who broke through the white ceiling.

I wasn't following the race that closely Tuesday night, so I didn't hear the official news until Wednesday morning. Although I wouldn't have been thrilled to have McCain as president, I would have been relieved as well as surprised. So I was of uncertain feelings when I got in the car to go to work and put in my CD of the rosary yesterday.

It was Wednesday, though, and I remembered that Wednesday is a day we usually say the Glorious Mysteries.

The Glorious Mysteries. Signs not just of hope, but of victory.

Yes, we suffered a relative defeat at the national level, but not all hope is lost. Proposition 8 passed in California, on the worldly level, and on the supernatural level, the triumph of good has already been secured.

We still have a lot of work to do. We might not be happy. But we should remember that, while we are deep in this vale of tears and can't see where it ends or what's over its rims, we already have a reason for joy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Came here via Mark Sheas comment thread. We here in New Zealand had a general election four days after the US. Here we turfed out the Social(ist) busybodies to put in place a centre right coalition. At Sunday mass the morning after most folk wore grins. I don't see it making any difference to the pro-life arguement except that the previous Govt was stiff with covertly militant weirdos. Most of them have gone except their policy writing appointees still lurk like termites in the Parliamentary woodwork.
Cheers
Stephen Sparrow

Ed Pie said...

Dang Stephen, sorry I missed you twelve years ago. A lot's happened since then. One can only learn so much from a handful of Wikipedia articles but it looks like you had a good run for a while. I think it's good to see a hegemony broken up every so often, even if it's a movement I agree with, but it's interesting to see a movement that prides itself on being historically inevitable to the degree where they start talking and even believing as if every victory of theirs cannot be undone; and then they lose and at least some of the progress is undone; and when they're back in power eventually it's not like they learned that they were vulnerable so much as they just think they took a break from the reins for a while.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so hopeful about Proposition 8, myself, but on the bright side it took a judicial end-run around a popularly elected law to quash. That's a clear sign about the standards of the people who did it, and some indication that California is (or at least was) not quite as blue a state as it seemed.