Taking heart in being part of a decadent majority

It’s odd to feel pleased in reading that we are not, after all, moving in a direction of strong “family values” and good “clean” fun. We are, according to Frank Rich of the NYTimes (Arts&Leisure Section), as decadent and coarse as always, whether we live under a Blue or Red sky. Rich writes:

There’s only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media’s conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results – and about American culture itself – confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of “The Passion of Christ” should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

I cannot emphasize how relieved I feel. The idea of Democrats pandering to the Fox-news watching anti-same-sex marriage and stem-cell research banning moral absolutists turned my stomach. It is so heartening to read that, at least according to this commentator, there has been no real shift: nothing has pushed these people into a statistically prominent forefront. They remain a small (albeit vocal) minority.