(RNS) The United States of America will survive this dreadful election season.

It will survive scandalous attack ads funded anonymously by super-rich folks trying to cut their tax bills, boost profits and promote their narrow ideological agendas, all under the guise of “values.”

It will survive the harvesting of anger and fomenting of fear. It will survive lies about health care and dodging accountability for the Great Recession. It will survive giving discredited trickle-down economics another try and allowing rapacious bankers to resume their predatory prowl.

It will even survive the U.S. Congress, a feckless crowd of fundraisers and obstructionists with no regard for the national interest.

The nation will survive this perfect storm of know-nothing delusion because, at the end of the day, innovation, youth and reality will prevail.

Almost-senior Tea Partiers might think a grand restoration of some bygone golden era is under way. But they will discover that Elvis has left the building. The days of American global sway are over. White male domination is over. A “Christian consensus” is over.

Right-wing social values shout well but don’t sell. Diversity and complexity have won. The baton is passing to a younger generation that doesn’t wake up every morning eager for Fox News to name the enemy du jour.

While older Americans with long memories are wrestling with changes that they perceive as losses and betrayals, younger Americans are pushing into an exciting new world. I subscribe to several dozen blogs and e-letters, most emanating from younger tech types and entrepreneurs, and I am astonished by their creativity, energy and innovation.

Some new ideas are trivial, like location-based restaurant reviews, but they spring from fertile imaginations. Eventually, those imaginations will be harnessed to combat serious issues. The hot college major, I’m told, is chemical engineering. The great dream is to build things — not hedge funds, but hospitals and schools.

Many of the young want to teach school. A 1960s-like idealism is taking flight, but this time it’s more serious, more likely to endure. One Texan reports a surge in young Presbyterian clergy, for whom 40 years of arguing over change and sexuality mean nothing.

Lifestyles are changing, with less focus on large houses, fancy cars and other debt-builders. There’s less expectation that career will be everything in life, and more focus on know-your-neighbor community.

Today’s current drift into plutocracy feels like the last election of the old regime. The presidency of a young black intellectual might not survive the moment, but I doubt that Karl Rove and his smarmy take-no-prisoners juggernaut will survive, either. Neither will the strange dance card of Beck-and-Palin and their thrust for anti-modernity.

The Tea Party movement feels like a short-lived outburst of rage and blame that might shift the power balance toward the GOP but won’t change anything substantial, because real substance lies elsewhere.

Just as American churches went nowhere while trying to resist modernity, so too will anti-modern politics run aground on realities like China, urbanization, the environment, new enterprises and a know-everything news world that eventually will discover who bought Congress. The young bring with them a commitment to transparency.

Just as “golden oldies” faded as a radio format, so the golden oldies politics of nostalgia and “restoring” will fade as a political engine.

Silly season is ending.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)