Perfection? No. But given the cards he was dealt and the people with whom he's had to deal, President Obama has make remarkable strides for us all. The messaging has let us down from time to time, and compromises we haven't always favored have been made, but there is no denying that our nation is in MUCH better shape fiscally and fundamentally than it was or would have been had the election of 2008 not gone our way.
I will never forget waking up that morning after OUR election. I was living in Santa Cruz at the time--where Democrats are the rightwing constituency--where I was fully able to relish in and enjoy those vibes. Everyone was smiling, and I saw not just the town, but the nation and the world with different eyes; in short, I had my faith in people restored.
I think I loved everyone as I hadn't perhaps...ever. The overwhelming sense of pride, pure strong pride was so great it was like that heart chakra-cracking awareness of empathy of which the prophet Nancy Goldberg so eloquently writes. The long dark days of the Bush-Cheney world were over, in a sense, and the light Ronald Reagan lied about had finally come to pass. I was even able--though they cost us tens of thousands of dollars, our sanity, and years off our lives from stress--to look to those awful eight years as the necessary step for our Revolution to happen so quickly. I doubt those who lost loved ones and the entire culture of their nations would be able to grant such forgiveness and I wouldn't expect them to. Their loss was so much more tragic than was mine.
Suddenly I didn't see the Birch Society everywhere I looked. I saw people who thought and weighed the issues, people who didn't blindly go along with what some fool in a pulpit told them to do. I saw citizens from every state and across the generations vote for a good man who also happened to be black.
Of course it was a historical accomplishment to be celebrated, but it was so much more. It was as if we had come out of a long sleep and found we all could speak the same language. We wouldn't get fooled again.
Now we face another election cycle and the fear-mongering, the hate-messaging has returned. But with our online social communities, we are reaching out to each other as we haven't before, even during the magic that was 2008. Each time we share and retweet and forward and post we are letting our voices and our hearts be heard. We can read in glowing screen light that we still share a dialectic--Obama2012.
Sure, my life will be better with a re-election, and I would think that most of yours will as well. But I want more than that. I want to have one of those mornings again this November. One of those days of moving about the town in staunch amazement at the wonder of our democracy. Now that I'm back home in Colorado, I'd love to feel that way again, here.
There are particular causes and concerns, there are things I'd like to change and things I hope to help implement, but what I really want is that pride of knowing that we're doing the right thing as a people. I like having that American flag in my yard again. I don't want it or any other symbols co-opted by hate, greed, nor fear of the unknown.
Am I a cockeyed optimist? Perhaps. Am I aware of the built-in defects of our political system? Of course. But the real question is: Do I think anyone whether Republican, Green, Independent, or otherwise will be able to or choose to do anything about that? No way.
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