What now?

Forgive a few rambling thoughts on this election day.

When the financial system came crashing down and AIG was nationalized, my readership stats began to dip. Not by much, and certainly not enough to throw in the towel (when they hit the 50-a-day mark, I'm outta here), but enough to convince me that McCain's brief front-runner status could not last. One could sense a turning point. The sheer magnitude of the Bush administration's National Upfuck made a party change inevitable, and even those who never cared for the Democratic standard-bearer would have a hard time voting R.

So what now for the PUMA contingent? Is that all she wrote?

Hardly. In politics as in chess, you must look well beyond the next move. Here's my six-moves-ahead forecast:

The progs will cheer themselves and snarl at us for a while, and the proud man's contumely will be difficult to bear. The Kossacks will feel justified in their strategy of winning hearts and minds by insulting the folks they hope to convert. But their unpleasant tactics will hurt the prog-bots in the long run. Eventually, the nation will turn against all of those waspish O-worshippers who spent this election season writhing in perpetual Coulter-gasm. Have faith in the inherent unlovability of the Kos Krowd.

When Obama stumbles -- and he will -- we will see a flurry of books that divulge what really happened during his rise to power. That's when Marshall and Moulitsas and Stassinopoulos will see their reps crumble.

The Obot pundits who now control much of the national debate will then lose their ability to command attention. They'll have no claim to "fight the Power." Their candidate will be the Power. And those who dislike the Power will dislike them. The Obots have nothing to say beyond "Behold the Lightbringer! Is He not glorious?" By March 2009 -- June at the latest -- that sort of messianism will seem very tiresome.

As for the real Ann Coulter and her ideological comrades, they will go into Automatic Gainsaying mode, as they did during the Clinton years. That too could get tiresome.

Result: We may enter a period in which the only interesting writing will appear on the PUMA blogs.

Yes, PUMA sites will lose readers during the period between election and inauguration, and for some little while afterward. But the contrarian sites that survive could one day seem cooler than cool and hipper than hip.

Here's the big problem: PUMAs need to keep their attacks distinct from the Republican attacks.

Conservatives are at their most creative -- and their most dangerous -- when they operate as outsiders. Beware reactionary propagandists who go into subversive mode. Beware the resurgence of right-wing populism. That's when the ghosts of Tom Watson and Tailgunner Joe will rise. That's when the Monster from the Id will snap its tether.

I fear a return to the Winter of Hate, 1994-95, when The X-Files was on the air and in the air. Remember when everyone was talking about militias and Roswell and evil bankers and all that rot? Conspiracy chic may come back, but with one key difference: The nation will not be prosperous. The nation will be filled with hungry, desperate, ill-educated people, many of them living in cars.

A dangerous situation indeed. We're talking Sieg Heil dangerous.

People will turn to conspiracy chic as their problems mount and Obama proves incapable of offering real solutions. (Frankly, I doubt that anyone can end our present difficulties.) And make no mistake: Many progs -- many who now worship at the altar of O -- will not be able resist the lure of conspiranoia.

I can see it coming. I can see it as clearly as if it has already happened.

The same simple-minded capital-B Believers in B, the ones who write to me every damn day to tell me that Jesus will forgive me if I simply accept His Only Begotten Lightbringer into my heart, those same people will be trying to sell me on the latest versions of the standard conspiracy memes. We'll see all the classics -- blame the Fed, blame the Jews, blame the Muslims, blame the Masons, blame the Illuminati, blame the Aliens. We'll see revamped versions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Report From Iron Mountain and the Gemstone File. We'll see a steady stream of new fake documents claiming to give us the scoop from deep inside Conspiracy Central.

Will progressives fall for this crap? Of course they will. Many of them are young and stupid, and they have the jackass self-confidence of the young and stupid. The new conspiracism will seem very exciting and cutting-edge to them, even though it will seem very old and familiar to geezers like me.

The task of the PUMAs will be to keep the heat on the Lightbringer without falling into the trap of conspiranoia.

The COLB controversy gave us a foretaste of how things will play out. I still recall the emails I received from Susan at No Quarter. The basic thrust of her messages came to this: Why are you insisting on proof? If it hurts Obama, it's gotta be good. Yup, it's good even if it's crap. The 9/11 nuts once sang a similar song. Many of them privately told me that I should parrot the CD theory even if I did not believe it, because it hurts Bush. Hurting Bush was all that mattered.

We now live in an age not of The Truth but The Narrative. The question is no longer: "What are the Facts?" but "Which side are you on?" Or: "Which reality makes you feel better?"

Suppose, for example, that a new terrorist outrage hits the country in 2009. A city blows up, the bubonic plague hits Yale, Al Qaeda establishes Sharia law on Tom Sawyer's Island at Disneyland. Whatever. You can guess the response: The administration's growing number of enemies will, of course, scream that Obama engineered the attack.

They will scream those words regardless of the actual facts on the ground. They will scream first on fringe sites like Alex Jones' Prison Planet, and then on Rigorous Intuition, and then the screamers will creep into places like D.U., and then a few of 'em will sneak into Air America. Frightening messages will appear in your email inbox. Every day. The meme will take hold. People who now love love love Barack Obama will become Obama-diddit theorists. Those emotionally wedded to this way of unthinking will assail anyone who says that the evidence for Obama-diddit is lacking -- which means, of course, that the new conspiracists will be furious with yours truly. "Whose side are you on, Cannon?" The same people who now try to convert me to the Gospel According to Barry will accuse me of being Barry's secret agent.

It's all so bloody predictable.

But such is our new world: The only thing that matters is the Narrative, and fuck the facts.

Which brings me to my post-election wishes for the PUMA-folk. May they survive, may they prosper, may they remain liberal (not "progressive"!), may they remain open to new and unusual ideas, may they continue to write the other way when handed a sheet of lined paper, may they speculate freely without mistaking speculation for proof -- and may PUMA-land be the last place in America where people still care about facts.