My Election Reaction

My Facebook posts in the days after the 2012 election provide a glimpse into how and why I reacted the way I did to what happened.

Storified by Domenico Bettinelli · Mon, Nov 12 2012 12:00:47

On the Wednesday after the election, I woke up in a very bad mood. While we’d won the Question 2 assisted suicide vote in Massachusetts (just barely), we’d lost nearly everything else: Senate, presidency, marriage votes in three (and later four) states, legalized marijuana. Everything.
Fair warning to everyone I encounter today: I’m in a piss-poor mood. America has embraced lies, economics of envy, destruction of family, blindness to extremists and terrorism, rejection of religious freedom. Is it any wonder when we are at historic lows for people who profess a religious faith and adults who are married? When you have lost family and faith, the only institution left is government. I hope you all are very happy together.
Why was I so angry, though? It’s not like the people I’d voted for hadn’t lost elections before.
Fr. Matt said I should co-host on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheGoodCatholicLife" class="">The Good Catholic Life</a> today instead of him. That would be a very, very bad idea. Entertaining for others, but only in the "car crash at Talledega" way.
I concluded that it must be precisely that reason. We keep losing elections and we keep losing them with candidates we’re not all that excited about in the first place.
People keep saying that Obama won the "Catholic" vote. Does having some ancestor who once worshipped in a Catholic church regularly make you Catholic? In what meaningful way can someone who rejects the faith be called Catholic?
And we keep losing the elections with Catholics voting for candidates that should inimical to them, candidates who support positions that should be unacceptable. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been fooling myself all this time. I used to tell myself that however bad things are, there is a silent majority of conservatives, that when push came to shove a majority of Americans wouldn’t support marriage, morality, and an economics of common-sense. I believed this despite the evidence of that past several decades which clearly show the United States moving in the exact opposite direction. And so I conclude that this was a phantasm of my own wishful thinking.
‎"If you’re discouraged today, it’s because you don’t have enough faith or don’t trust in God or you put your trust in the wrong things." <br> Screw that attitude. I’m discouraged because the love of God doesn’t mean our country isn’t going to go up in smoke. God loved the Romans in the Roman Empire. He loved the Carthaginians. He loved all the Catholics in North Africa.<br> <br> Yes, God is faithful, but man is not and our country just gave him the big middle finger. We haven’t just passed the tipping point. We passed the point of no return. There just aren’t enough people left who believe in traditional morality, traditional work ethics, traditional self-sufficiency.
I was thus discouraged not by a single election, but by the realization of what we’ve truly lost. We’ve passed the point of no return where it will take a major catastrophe to bring people to a point to realize what we’ve done.
More adults in the US are unmarried than married for the first time. No offense to single folks, but people are who are married with kids think differently and form the stable, conservative foundation against wild swings. We have the highest rate of people who have no faith in history. That’s another massive difference. Even people we used to think as conservative are okay with homosexuality, with contraception, with all the other crap. This time I think it’s too far gone to come back without everything going to hell. Until we’re stripped of everything but God, we won’t wise up as a people.Domenico Bettinelli
What I’ve learned in the past 48 hours is that if I’m disappointed in the results of the election and the direction the country is headed in I’m a hater who lacks faith in God and/or the American people, who’s unwilling to compromise and who’s being whiny rather than rolling up my sleeves to make the change I want to see (because I don’t get to have a moment to be disappointed or angry) and who should stop being blind in my political preferences and "nanny nanny boo boo, you lost and we won." <br> Or so I’m told.<br> <br> Does that about cover it?
Of course, there are those who were quick to label people like me whiners and haters. They said we couldn’t get past our dislike of a particular politicians and move on for the sake of America. They just don’t get it. It’s not about Obama or any one politician, but the whole lot of them: Democrat, Republic, third-party. You have to search very hard to find a true conservative and even then they’re outliers. What upsets me is that it’s all gone to pot. And so now the disappointment and anger I felt on Wednesday has hardened into determination. I’m not going to turn into a conspiracy theorist who sees black helicopters and concentration camps in our future, but neither am I inclined to mollycoddle or mince words. 
The doctor recommended a prescription for a medication that could radically improve my life. It’s not directly life sustaining, but it would make an amazing difference in the quality of my life. <br> Unfortunately, it’s $200 per month and our insurance doesn’t cover it.<br> <br> In the New America, shouldn’t I demand this by right from the 1%? If Sandra Fluke can get free birth control from her Catholic university employer so she can bed down with whomever she wants at no (fiscal) cost to her, should I demand my Catholic employer give me whatever medication I want to improve my quality of life? Granted I’m a middle-aged white male and thus by definition somehow one of life’s great privileged few and de facto member of the 1%. <br> <br> Nevertheless, the lesson from our latest election is that my wants and needs trump the common good, so …. GIMME!!
Dom, I was out of work for a year. My meds that I DID NEED TO SURVIVE cost $2700 a month. I was bringing in $1100. Thanks to a govt. program I was able to get them at reduced cost, but since that happened under Obama I guess that’s a bad thing.Bob Duncan
Bob, but you did need them to survive and were out of work. I don’t need them to survive and have a job, thus I am one of the privileged. Still, we live in the era of the handout so maybe I can get one now. We’re giving away everything for free now, so why not?Domenico Bettinelli
The government programs that provided your meds well pre-existed Obama and they’re there just sort of situations. Obamacare opens up the goody bag so now any horny co-ed who’d rather not spend the weekend beer money on the Pill can get free ones from her Catholic employer. It’s a brave new world!Domenico Bettinelli
I’m going to say what I think and damn the consequences. I’ve already had some people unfriend me on Facebook and other social media. (Although this new attitude seems to be popular because I’ve had an unusual number of friend requests too.
The "Man who killed Bin Laden" will brook no dissent from the men who actually killed Bin Laden. After SEALs criticized him and campaigned against, Obama will
retaliate against all Navy SEALs. BEcause if there’s one thing that defines the Chicago way it’s revenge and payback.
This is a new era we’re in. This lame-duck lame president is going to be driving us to new lows in our country. Maybe that will finally wake up the sheep who thought we should give this incompetent, self-important boob from Chicago four more years because four years just isn’t enough to fix… well, anything. (Never mind that Reagan and even Clinton were able to do it.) And so while I sit up nights trying to figure out how to pay the oil bill and buy food and pay the mortgage, I can console myself that at least I didn’t vote for this situation, but have fought it all along for the past twenty years. I wonder how the idiots who voted for all this will console themselves.