Midterm Elections. A sweeping Republican victory… Except that the Democrats held on to the Senate. Republicans swept state governments. Except in Minnesota where I live. We probably won’t know the results of the elections for another 6 months, meaning we’re going to hang on to our president hopeful governor until there is a long drawn out, nationally humiliating, court battle. Which incidentally probably won’t help the outgoing governors bid for national office. No one will believe it. A candidate that actually won a Minnesota election? Surely not. That can’t possibly happen in Minnesota, unless you elect a professional wrestler as your governor.

You got to love the spin, the truly silly nature of it. I’ve heard that the Tea Party is revolution that will change the face of American. Yeah, right. Just like the sweeping Democratic change two years ago…

Let’s be realistic. They’ll get to Washington, realize the difference between politics and governing. To win elections you need to yell, polarize people, make people feel things for you that in ordinary life would be frightening. To govern you have to somehow convince someone else as proficient in yelling and polarizing as you are to help you reach your goals. And we all know that yelling doesn’t work to get anything done, just ask any teenager.

In order to get anything done in Washington, somehow a California representative is going to have to work with a guy from Alabama who will have to work with someone from Boston who’ll have to comprise with some guy from Chicago. At this point in our history, I doubt that two guys from Boston and Chicago actually talk the same dialect of English. Bring the legalizing pot faction from California and the Boston dude will go cross eyed and the Chicagoan will think that anyone living near an ocean is nuts. Something about the word car not having an “r” in it, and people in California actually wanting to legalize a way to make themselves even weirder than they already are.

By the way, by and large Midwesterners do think that both Coasts are nuts, mostly because Coastal dwellers are notoriously bad at geography. The Midwest is hiding in plain sight, it’s the connective tissue holding the country together that no one can find on an map. Yeah Iowa… where the potatoes grow... And Wisconsin, where did we put Wisconsin… isn’t that near Colorado?

The whole point of the government is why we hate it so much. Nobody wins in Washington. No one can win. It’s a lose lose situation, set up that way by people a lot more schooled in human nature than anyone alive today. They understood that two people, in their case from North Carolina and Connecticut might not agree on anything, but if they wanted to keep the country safe, they would somehow have to work together to get that done. They were more willing to compromise than we seem to be. Granted they could have been overpowered at a moment’s notice from about 20 countries at any point in their first 100 years, which probably provided some better incentive for comprise.

Our leaders have no reason to comprise. They can spend as much time as they want doing nothing and nothing really bad will happen. As much as we’d like to be scared of the Muslim religious upheaval and the fact that China out populates us by 3 times, a country would have to be totally insane to actually attack us.

And yes, we were attacked on 9/11 and that was followed by the serious attack on … Yeah… didn’t happen. We’re vulnerable to terrorists, every country is vulnerable to terrorists. They have been since the US invented terrorism during the Revolutionary War. Terrorist situations are bad for small groups of people at a time and the United States will continue to be a target for terrorism, but it won’t destroy the United States as a whole.

Besides, Americans have a failsafe maneuver to isolate themselves from terrorism. First of all, don’t travel to Europe, Northern Africa, or the Mideast. You don’t want to be a victim of a terrorist, don’t go to where there are terrorists. Second step, move to the Midwest. If people from New York can’t figure out where Kansas City is, how would a terrorists? Plus, they’ve got some damn good food coming from that quarter. Just watch out for the ice storms… with the hills along the Missouri River, winter driving gets a bit treacherous.

We aren’t going to be attacked, not in a way that would destroy us outright. So what are the law makers supposed to be doing? A stunning number of Americans don't care. Even in Obama’s sweeping victory and the get out the vote effort only got around 57% of people of voting age to actually vote. That was a good year. What that means is that 43% or roughly 120 million people didn’t care. That’s roughly the same number of people that live in Mexico and all of Central America. Or for more local numbers, more than the total populations of California, New York State, Texas, and Florida combined.

Why? Why don’t they care. Because for ordinary American’s, by and large the national political scene doesn’t really matter. Our founding fathers were impressive people. First of all, they thought we were stupid and they were pretty much right about that. So they set up a powerful system that does two things at the same time. It keeps ambitious people from getting too much power and forces two people who have nothing in common to work together. It forces comprise, it resists change. So, nothing is going to change in Washington. Nothing can change in Washington. It was set up that way. It’s amazing that Obama got as much done as he did and is probably why the Democrats lost the midterms.

But what Washington does, it does it well. It allows Americans to get fat by eating pizza and drinking beer watching one of our many sport leagues. It allows Americans to argue over American Idol stars. It gives us space to drink fancy cocktails while trying out exotic foods at little bistros. It gives us time to walk the dog and pay attention to our children. It gives us freedom to not pay attention.

The Tea Party will not change Washington politics anymore than Obama did, anymore than Whigs did. So go walk the dog, have dinner with your kids. Things in Washington won’t change enough for you to notice.