It happens every time Democrats win. Pundits and assorted media fuckwits start suggesting various ways Democrats can ‘reach across the aisle’ and work with Republicans. Every single fucking time they advise Democrats to be gracious in victory, to take a conciliatory tone, to find common cause with Republicans who’ve suffered a defeat.

Fuck that. Fuck that in every possible way.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of seriously angry, pissed off Democratic supporters who are eager to take revenge on MAGA for all the massively horrific shit they’ve pulled these last two years. They want to punish. to scourge, to make those motherfuckers pay. I totally get that and I feel much the same way. Achilles, who knew a thing or two about making motherfuckers pay, said revenge was “sweeter far than trickling honey.”

But fuck that too.

The thing is, Democrats CAN reach across the aisle. But they need to do it to hold the motherfuckers accountable. Not for revenge, but for justice. For setting the tone for the future of representative democracy. They can reach across the aisle, seize the motherfuckers by the scruff of their necks, and make sure they bear the consequences of their actions. I mean, that’s the job, right?

Will it be easy? Nope. It’ll be hard, and awkward, and ugly. A lot of folks on both sides of that aisle will misinterpret or misunderstand what’s being done and why it’s being done. Too bad. Democrats have to do it anyway. They failed to it once before; now they have to rectify their mistake.

There’s an old Norwegian folktale about a poor, lazy kid named Halvor who, after your basic shipwreck scenario, ends up at a castle where he rescues three princesses by lopping off the multiple heads of various trolls. He falls in love with the youngest, but misses his parents. So the princesses give him fine clothes and a ring that allows him to magically travel home. There he and his fine clothes impress the hell out of everybody, especially the young village women who’d scorned Halvor for being poor and lazy. Halvor insults them, then magically brings the three princesses to the village so the village girls will be jealous. That pisses off the princesses, who take back the ring, slip a fake ring on Halvor’s finger, and leave him sleeping on the turf by a pond.

Halvor, waking up and realizing he’d fucked up massively, goes in search of the castle. This, of course, involves a long series of setbacks and misfortunes and hindrances. By the time Halvor finally makes his way back to the castle, he looks like a vagrant. Because this is a fairy tale, he also discovers the youngest princess is about to be married to…some unnamed guy. Halvor drops the fake ring into the customary marriage cup and arranges for a cup-bearer to serve it the princess. She finds the ring and…

‘Yes, he is the right one,’ cried the youngest Princess when she caught sight of him; so she flung the other out of the window and held her wedding with Halvor.

My point in nattering on like this is that right now Democrats are Halvor just after lopping off the troll heads. They’ve done heroic work getting elected. But this isn’t the time for them to show off, to parade themselves in their newly-elected finery, to assume that since they’ve slain the trolls they now get to live happily ever after.

They did that once before, the first time they defeated Trump. Then, like Halvor, Democrats had to go through a whole world of shit to get back to the castle and get the princess to toss the other guy out the fucking window.

They’re made their way back at the castle gates. They need to finish the job. It’s not about punishing the trolls; it’s about making the troll answerable for their trollish behavior. It’s about making sure no more trolls find their way back into the castle kitchen.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The illustration is by the wonderfully named Victorian painter Lancelot Speed, for the 1890 edition of Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book.