The Red Death

In this national debate over red states and blue states, I am reminded of the immortal words of Edgar Allan Poe, my hero, my American literary saint:

     THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever
     been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the redness
     and the horror of blood.
     ***
     And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come 
     like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-
     bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.
     And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And
     the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death
     held illimitable dominion over all.

Thus have the majority of American voters spoken: "Do not change Horsemen in the middle of the Apocalypse."