Six Hours and Forty-Five Minutes From 2015 ...

... and I find myself drifting back to a post I made almost exactly four years ago, as you can tell from its title.  Much of its basic advice still applies, but I'd like to take this opportunity to expand upon it a little.

As was the case four years ago at this time, the political climate stunk.  The Democrats lost both houses of Congress this time, instead of just one--and by margins that make the Republicans look far more invincible than they actually are.  And this happened despite a number of positive developments on the national front, especially the quickening pace of the economic recovery, which can be fairly blamed on no one but President Obama and the Democratic congressional majorities that put his policies in place, before the Party of No took over.  Still, the legacy media was hell-bent on promoting confrontation-in-DC stories (easier to report than real news) and, with the help of the GOP and its craven tactics, it worked.  For now.

For now, and not for much longer.  A party whose majorities rest on the unholy trinity of voter restrictions, dark money, and gerrymandering does not have a future, regardless of what is in its past.  This was an election the Republicans took because they've gamed the system.  And, frankly, because we let them.  And when I say "we," I'm not just talking about the Democrats in office.  I'm talking about the Democrats, and progressives generally, that didn't show up at the polls, didn't organize, didn't contribute, didn't blog, tweet or share online, and generally decided that it's OK to let the country go to hell because perfect solutions are the only ones that work.

A little friendly advice from someone who has spent nearly sixty years looking for perfect solutions (yes, me):  they don't exist.  Yes, the lesser of two evils is still evil, but it's still less evil, and more righteous.  And the only person who has the power to stop the greater evil is you, Mr. and Ms. John/Jane Q. Voter.  And if you don't do what you have to do to stop the greater evil, you share a measure of responsibility for its success.  That's right.  As was the case in 2010, this one's on all of you who did nothing.

And that matters tremendously, because politics, as I've said before, is more generational than local.  What we saw in 2014 is, potentially, the last gasp of a dying generation, one that made its fortune on the shifting economic sands of supply-side economics, and one that will do anything to try to hang on to that fortune before the debt that supports it destroys it.  And by anything, I mean destroying you instead.  They're happy to see you working four jobs to pay the rent.  They're happy to dream of you using whatever Social Security you get to pay off your student loans.  They're happy to see you living in a fraction of the financial circumstances you deserve, because that makes it all the easier for them to win.  And unless things change, they will win--or we will all go down together.

Apathy is a trap, built by the undeserving oppressors to keep the undeserving subjects in place.  "You can't help yourselves," they tell you.  "We're the only alternative," they will assure you.  "Get over yourselves and get used to it, because we're the only reality you'll ever know."  Are you just sitting there, buying this garbage?

Well, stop it.  Take the advice of my late father-in-law, whom I lost a year ago.  He made it through D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge with a broken back, and still managed to build a clothing business and raise two families.  His last major piece of advice to my wife and me is that you have to fight for everything in life.  Nothing comes easy, and certainly not if it's worth having in the first place.  It's advice she and I have taken to heart this year.  We've faced many challenges, but also received many blessings--a new granddaughter, a new car, and a paid-off house.

So, don't look at the political wreckage of the past year, and think that a better future can't be built.  That's the recipe for the sucker's paradise the GOP is trying to build for itself.  It CAN be done.  It MUST be done.  But it WON'T be done without you.  Make a commitment to make a difference in 2015.  A better society is waiting for you, IF you decide, as Captain Picard of "Star Trek:  The Next Generation" might put it, to make it so.

And thus, I close with the same words I closed in 2010:

NOLI ARROGANTIUM INIURIAS PATI!  And HAPPY NEW YEAR!