The short shelf life of an historic election.

Talking of tsunamis, there’s a tsunami of words about this election. The word cloud is dense with beauties like ‘seismic’ ‘generational’ ‘historic.’

Let’s keep it simple.

Relief.

Relief from the intense cultural pressure applied by President Reagan in 1980, the template of layered culture war flashpoints to provide cover for driving excessive national wealth to white men.

Republican story-telling ranges from black welfare queens living large on government handouts, to Islamic communists infiltrating government to impose sharia law.

It’s been a winning strategy—distract and divide. But Trump added a corruption virus to the mix, which caused a massive, long overdue response.  The pressure value of fear, war, hate finally broke.

Relief.

The window to build systems to resist the oligarch assault on our democracy is tiny—one year. I doubt Republicans will go away. Those culture war memes still have bite. But Trump went too far. He broke the rules. He didn’t use his office to tell the shining city on a hill story that proved such a successful cover for the wealth heist at the center of Republican policies for the last fifty years. Instead, he practiced naked corruption and demonized everyone who stood against that corruption. The American people finally had enough.

Republicans are in overdrive spinning this loss, but it was a self-inflicted wound. Ignoring the economic pressures on the American people caused by the massive wealth gap, excessive displays of oligarch wealth—ballrooms, arches, golf courses— stripping rights from women, shooting citizens in the streets, launching three wars in the middle east, betraying allied democracies to favor tyrants and enemies of the republic, all those things shredded the cover story so carefully spun by generations of Republican white men to hide their shenanigans.

We’ve got a rare and fleeting moment of relief from all that. It’s exciting. I’ve been confused since Obama left office. Some Americans aggressively turned from the American Dream and doubled-down on the Oligarch Dream—monetize everything to create massive wealth for themselves. America as a vending machine serving elite customers. The polar opposite of our historic mission. The ticky-tacky city on the hill.

I’m getting active. I’m holding Democrats’ feet to the fire. We need smart governance. Focused. The culture warriors will try to knock us off course. And they are so practiced at it. Crack your knuckles, flex your muscles and prepare to get to work, America. Relief is brief, but oh so welcome after decades of economic oppression.