*sighs*

Well, we lost on Alito. We, the American people lost, because they, the Democrats, seriously dropped the ball. The progressive blogosphere should have been writing the Dems talking points, and then Dems should have been hammering about just how detrimental a judge like Alito will be to the American people in general. But, that's okay. It ain't all over.

Things continue to look up for 2006, not to mention 2008. Certain Dems are starting to rediscover a backbone and maybe, just maybe, our chances will look up. The progressives have got to have hope that eventually, our views will see the light of day. We just can't give up. It's an uphill battle, and it's gonna be a long battle, but ultimately, we'll win it.

Why will we win it? The Progressives will win because the Progressives are right. We care about people. And finally, our elected leaders have stopped kowtowing to the Right and developed some balls. And we're getting our say.

Sure, we lost today. But we'll win the future.

Some endings are nothing more than just beginnings of another sort. Today, Serenity fades from memory. Today, a new Serenity arises.

I like the above quote. Part of it implies that some things just aren't possible. And there are those things. But I don't believe that fixing humanity isn't one of those things that can't be done. It's not gonna be easy, but that's what courage is for. The courage to do the right thing. If you can't do something smart, at least do something right.

We have to set out to do the impossible. Those lofty goals are the source of humanity's strength. The fact that we can be visionary, that we can have unattainable dreams, is part of what sets humanity apart from the flora and fauna of the world. We are not above them, but we are different from them in that we can conceive of perfection and set out to attain it. We can never reach perfection, but why that should stop us from working towards that I'll never understand.

We should never settle. We should never settle in our academic lives, our professional lives, our personal lives. And as a people, as humans, we should not be content with the status of the world. But at the same time we have to recognize that things cannot be fixed in a day, and it's very likely they will not be on track within my lifetime. But that its not what we have at the end thats important, its what we did to get there.

We're entering an important time in the evolution of the Political. We're returning to a sense of community on a global scale because of technology akin to something that hasn't existed since the era of the Greek city-states. Because someone in New York can talk to someone in Tokyo in an instant, because grassroot can network from India to Latin America, because the transfer of ideas and information can happen instanteously, we're in a new world. We're in a new time, a time where we need to re-envision the concept of the citizen and see them as more than just someone possessing certain rights. The citizen must be drawn back into the political process more than just casting a vote once every two or four years. And this cannot happen until a host of other changes occur. But the process is the important part, a process which makes equality and equal treatment for all the norm.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that until we realize that how we're proceeding just won't work, we won't really get anywhere. We aren't striding towards perfection, we're barely hobbling. But I've got the courage to do the right thing, even if it isn't the smart thing.