Last Night's Winner: Lunatic America

So, yeah, the towering weirdos and self-styled public slapdicks are big winners yet again, and this being America, we cannot let such a momentous occasion pass without being loudly stupid about it.

Just consider all of the media's horribly misdirected analysis both in the run-up and aftermath: the overcoverage of eccentrics and crackpots [1]; the emphasis on tactics [2] and messaging [3] and similarly worthless trivia [4]; the widely bruited myth that leadership and character [5] had anything to do with anything at all, and that momentum [6] and various other chimera [7] carried the day; a widespread refusal to look closely at historical precedent and structural causes [8] in favor of spurious pattern identification and loose talk about "narrative" [9]; the idea that this was a permanent rebuke to progressive thought in favor of what, at bottom, is an incompetent and retrograde philosophy [10] that, not incidentally, led to some of the most staggering mistakes of the last decade [11]; and the notion, above all, that these events represent the ominous rumblings of a seismic realignment across the land [12] instead of a simple case of shit happening, as shit so often does this time of year. The Giants won the World Series. Shit happens, America.

[1] Via; [2] Via; [3] Via; [4] Via; [5] Via; [6] Via; [7] Via; [8] Via; [9] Via; [10] Via; [11] Via; [12] Via