Before there can be unity, first there must be justice.

Two men whose minds and views I generally respect greatly, autographedcat and bedlamhouse, have pointed me to Wil Wheaton's latest blog post, in which he tries to reconcile the tremendous good news of this week's elections with his own seething anger at the events of the eight years prior. (Yes, that Wil Wheaton; young Wesley Crusher is all grown up, writing and has a beard, a wife and kids now. And doesn't that make you feel old?)

Wil's friend counsels him, “We don’t need to take any shit from anyone, but we can not become the bullies we’ve hated. Or else we didn’t win anything at all.” And there is some merit in that thought; if we adopt the methods and attitudes of our oppressors, we become no better than our oppressors. And sooner or later, we will have to start working more on building the better nation we voted for than on gaining partisan political advantage. But I still felt moved to respond to this in Bill's LJ page with some thoughts that have been simmering in my mind all day, and I'm posting an expanded version of them here.
( Cut for length and rantiness. )