Chilled Words on a Cold Election Night

American conservatives are happy tonight, as most of their candidates for legitimately contested political office are winning. What could this event bring to the United States? Well, a lot of depressing actions. Here's an upcoming GOP menu for your digestion:

• Turning pregnant women into potential felons
• Dismembering health care fairness
• Voter repression campaigns aimed at minorities (why are conservatives afraid of people of color?)
• The evisceration of many environmental protections
• The disintegration of church-state separation
• The spectacle of Southern Republicans denouncing the federal government while pitching for increased defense spending in their respective districts

Of course, there are GOP presidential candidates to consider:
Scott Walker
Chris Christie
Rand Paul
Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Mitt Romney (!)
and the "moderate" Republican's great white hope, Jeb Bush

I'm trying to imagine any of this group in the same room with Vladimir Putin. If there's a wager in play, take Putin and the points against any of these right-wing lightweights (Bush excepted).

Tonight's voting let me to think about writers, in the belief that words can still sway minds to specific paths of thought and action. For books such as Albert Camus' La Peste, Leonardo Sciascia's Il Giorno della Civetta, Andrea Camilleri's Il  Cane de Terra-Cotta, Edna O'Brien's Country Girls, Chester Himes' Cotton Comes to Harlem, Anais Nin's diaries, and all other works that attempt to explore and depict reality, I take hope and, with them, defy tonight's vote that unfortunately delivered a profound ignorance upon our land.