Reports of deaths are often exaggerations.
However that may disappoint.
Bigotry. Conservatism. The GOP. The Tea Party. They've all been the stars of premature obituaries and last gasps of late, some, I must confess, from my own keyboard.
But preemptive eulogizing's not a new phenomenon in American politics. Hoover was the last gasp of plutocracy. McCarthyism was the last gasp of reactionary conservatism. Or was that Goldwater? I remember attending a conference in the 80s where Laurie Anderson declared Jesse Helms the last gasp of a dying culture of fear.
And, of course, there are the more recent reports of political Cheyne–Stokes respiration featuring wankoffs like Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz.
But I've come to believe we've been mistaken. Those aren't last gasps. That's just the way Lord Vader sounds. The same complex and powerful machinery that keeps him alive often makes it sound as though that effort will prove fruitless at any moment.
There will always be reactionary movements, supported by expensive, live-giving machinery, in our world. Those with much money and power find these movements too useful in conserving that money and power, and those easily terrified by the new and, even more, the different, will always be there to be exploited.
Reports of their deaths, etc.
So, while we rightly cheer the defeat of hateful laws and the first breakthroughs of people and ideas heretofore forbidden at the national table, let's not get giddy. Vader lives, as he and his ilk will always live: well, at the expense of others.
We will always enjoy a natural advantage over the powerful and the fear-driven, if we muster the will to use it:
There are a lot more of us.