Oh, to write like LIleks

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SuddenlyEnlightenedLand

Posted by Lileks on Nov 7, 2008 in General Bewailment

Hey, remember after 2004, when the interior of the country was viewed with deep suspicion for its insufficient interest in a John Kerry presidency? Crude maps called it JESUSLAND, a place opposed to liberty and education. Well, shuck my corn and call me Orville: the red part of the country has been reduced to something that looks like a mild case of contact dermatitis.

The solid block of flyover Christiansts who spend every Sunday hopping up and down so they can get a head start on the Rapture appears to have turned into enlightened change-agent lightwalkers, and in a mere four years. Or, the people in the middle of the country weren’t all weirdoes who still harbored a grudge against the Renaissance, and viewed the coasts as they were greedy remoras fastened on the Real America. In any case, no one will make mocking maps of them now.

The lesson, as always, is that things change. Things will change again. And I expect that the GOP leadership will conclude that since things do change, they can sit back and wait for it to happen again. Which is a recipe for ensuring that the next such map has a thin red line like the one you used to use to open a Band-Aid.

I wonder if anyone would be talking about historic realignment and Change.gov and a new bright future if Hillary Clinton had kicked Fred Thompson to the curb in the same way. Probably not; even if the numbers had been the same, the results would not be described in the same techtonic terms. Would it have been the same if McCain had rolled forth soaring rhetoric, and Obama sounded like Wally Cox? Irrelevant, of course, but that map, as conclusive as it looks, owes its hues to intangibles you can’t predict, and can’t manufacture. The Romans may have had too many gods, but there was one that seemed both wise and playful, just and capricious.

Fortune.

(This comes from the NYT election results site, here. (h/t Allahpundit @ hotair.com)