So, where do we go from here?

A lot of interesting developments last night, in a terrifying sort of way, just some scattershooting:

• The number of voters was way down from ’08.  It looks like more conservatives stayed home than Obama supporters.  In a number of states, the margin of Obama victory was support for 3rd party candidates.  This is all very preliminary, of course, but it appears lack of conservative enthusiasm for Romney may have played a very big role in this election
• The democrat wins, however, were very deep.  Even here in Texas – which is trending more dem.  It looks like the Tea Party movement has run out of steam.  Not much impact last night, and all those huge rallies and spontaneous events have largely gone away.  Of course they would. They have jobs and lives and families, unlike the ‘occupy’ crowd.
• More on this later, but gay marriage won big last night.  It has finally been put in place by popular vote.  This is a sea change. These trends are running in only one direction.  And with Obamacare, I don’t see how we ever get rid of abortion.  Or government funded contraception.  These are dark times
• We can expect the Republican party to be even less friendly to pro-life concerns as we go forward.  This loss will almost certainly encourage the party to shift to even more “moderate” emphasis.  This is feeling like the 60s/70s, when Republicans had to run as democrat-lite.
• This election almost certainly portends a shift towards democratic national political ascendency.  With the enormously influential programs being put in place and growing, Obama may have built an almost insuperable electoral coalition, for some time to come.  Or not.  He could have won due to many conservatives seeing the choice as tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.  We’ll see.

On a personal note, I’m surprisingly not upset.  In fact, I’m more upset about gay marriage being voted into law in Maine, Washington, and Maryland, and a push to define marriage as between one man and woman in the constitution of Minnesota failing, than I am about Obama. I sort of expected it.  Oh, I had pretty good hopes a week or so ago, but then I started having literal premonitions of an Obama victory (something I’ve never had before), and not only that, it looks like my premonitions were disturbingly accurate.

Hello, Europe.

With regard to the Church, gird your loins.  Have your staff in hand, and be ready to travel.  Seriously.  Buy altar bread.

Or, the bishops may come to an ‘accommodation’ which saves a tiny bit of face but essentially involves cooperation with grave evil?

What other forms of persecution do you expect?

Are we at 5, or 6 o’ clock?  I’m fairly skeptical of the left hand of the clock for now.

But then again, persecution and difficulty tends to raise up many great Saints.  More than anything else, that is what the world needs right now.

Can we assume God’s Will was done by this election?  Or, have Americans so collectively fallen away that this result was actually an expression of rejection of God’s Will?