The election is over. The result was, well, interesting. In some ways I’m disappointed, but in other ways, I’m pleased. The Democrats clearly are in over their heads with respect to managing the cultural crisis and, as a result, that problem is going to get worse before it gets better. But when you look at the election from an anthropological / psychological perspective, the outlook is much less dismal.

Let’s look at the roles played by both parties. First the Democrats:

• Their goals are based on ideology rather than a logical plan to achieve specific outcomes.
• They continue to work, year after year, to achieve long range goals.
• They care more about how people feel than such esoteric concepts as justice. This includes Terrorists. They think the only problem with Terrorists is that we made them mad.
• In short, their choices are based on emotion rather than logic and facts.

The Republicans, on the other hand:

• Are only concerned about the last election and the next election
• Are afraid to actually do anything because they want people to like them.
• When they are motivated (which isn’t very often), they do look at facts and try to have at least a limited, short-term understanding of cause and effect.
• Don’t know how to use political power consistently

For this particular election, we can add the following:

• Democrats still think they were cheated in the 2000 election and as a result, they hate everything about George Bush.
• This hatred blinds them to many other significant issues.
• George Bush’s ideology is not classic conservatism. He seems to believe that big government is usually part of the solution rather than the problem.
• George Bush and other non-conservative Republicans think illegal aliens are a good mechanism for shifting the financial burden of unskilled labor from business to individual taxpayers and the resulting benefit to business outweighs all other factors.
• Republicans won’t try anything until they think it will succeed. They waste political opportunity and then have few accomplishments to show.

Then, if we look at the “undecided” voters themselves, we find:

• They are fed up with the status quo. They want any change.
• All they ever see in the news is negative reports. The media will not report the good things that happen in Iraq or show Bush or other Republicans in a good light. (The media actually won the election and the Democrats rode to victory on the media’s coattails.)
• They are fed up with the Republican’s failure to carry through on their promises.
• Since most voters do not devote a great deal of time and effort to studying politics, they make choices based on little depth of understanding.

While these lists are incomplete, they do shed some light on what we have to work with. Pretty dismal isn’t it? Based on this analysis of the current situation, the fact that this election was so close in so many races is pretty remarkable.

But every “old media” news report pushes more people toward the inevitable conclusion that they are being manipulated. Soldiers come back from Iraq and report that what’s really happening in the war is dramatically better than what is being reported. Some Republican politicians are beginning to understand that they must walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. And, of course, there is the big one; another attack or two like 9/11 and it will be obvious that Democratic action is as bankrupt as their rhetoric.

The average voter has a short memory and doesn’t handle intellectual depth very well, but they usually make good choices when they realize what’s at stake. It would have been better to have avoided this step, but make no mistake about it, the proverbial two-by-four is on its way and a lot of people will have sore heads.