As everyone in the country probably knows by now, there were some extremely important elections last night – voters were angry, the establishment was in danger, the tides were rising…

…and then we all woke up to realize nothing had changed.

Blanche Lincoln is the democratic candidate in Arkansas, Harry Reid is going to the general election against an oath keeper (aka Tea Party mascot), and South Carolina is as far from a rational existence as ever – what with an adulterer, I mean non-adulterer, I mean serial adulterer, leading the way to the Republican governorship and an employed, unknown, soon-to-be-felon becoming the Democratic Senate candidate.

But this all shows an intense anti-incumbent mood, right? RIGHT?

And it shows that the Tea Party is a political force, right? RIGHT?

Most obviously, it shows that 2010/2012 are going to be landslides for Republicans, right? RIGHT?

Actually, I have no fucking idea what any of last night’s primary elections mean. I don’t think anyone in the media, speaking on TV, writing on the internet or print, has any legitimate claim to know what the meaning of the elections were. But they sure do have the reason to project such legitimacy, don’t they? They have to be seen as oracles, political magi, sages of old; they can’t be seen as mere journalists.

So they make shit up. Or their producers make shit up. But the point is, somewhere down the line, a narrative is fabricated.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these folks who tries to blame our “mainstream media” for all of the nation’s ills. I’m the type of folk to blame the type of folks who naively believe that the entirety of news-worthy activity in our country can be condensed to fit inside narratives for our nation’s ills. That means you who utters the phrase “liberal media” in a flushed rebuttal of facts that don’t fit your preconceptions; and you who immediately writes off every layer of nuance, subtlety, and complexity in a news story, to partisanship. Rest assured though, plenty more powerful folks than the typical cable news watcher or lunch-break political scientist are to blame for our country’s issues, albeit much more directly to blame.

Like those schmucks in the MMS who sat on their hands while creating the circumstances under which millions of barrels of crude oil now inhabit the Gulf of Mexico.

Or those damn BP managers who took advantage of a lax regulatory environment in order to skirt costly safety measures.

Or those heinous neo-cons that were instilled in power by Supreme Court decree and led our nation into 2 fruitless, bloody, and protracted wars, both of which are to blame for enormous budget deficits and national debt and both of which continue to this day (9 and 7 years later).

So today, fresh on the heels of another election projection of conflicting narratives and political grandstanding, there is no article more appropriate than this bit of satire from Slate.