What an amazing night! Let’s hope he respects us in the morning, and makes good on all that pillow talk…
I had an email conversation with some friends back east in Virginia (which Obama carried, thank you very much). It was suggested that, essentially, we had avoided a corrupt dictatorship in favor of an empty hope. My reply, which I’ve been mulling on ever since: cynicism is not wisdom, any more than hope is a plan - but that these substitutes allow us to cope when we’re down and out until we can think of a better way.
Despite all the hype, I truly believe in the essence of the man that is Barack Obama and the leader that he seeks to be. I feel we have lost our way as a nation, despite all our enormous accomplishments. Obama is not the answer to our problems - rather, he is the question, made manifest: “What if?”
What if we try diplomacy first, and bombing second? What if justice is served via wisdom rather than fear? What if we treat affordable health care as a right rather than a privilege? What if those with more than they need helped those with less?
What if we could recreate a sense of civic duty as Americans that could drive us to work harder, better, together, for the good of the country first, and our endless pursuit of junk and distraction a distant second?
I have no illusions that the days ahead are going to be anything but challenging, and the president can’t really make us do these things any more than he can fly. But he can use sound judgment, he can choose wise counsel, he can learn from and be honest about his mistakes, and thus inspire the people who he represents to make manifest the country they would very much like to be citizens of but feel distant from. The United States of America is Us, like it or not - blaming “the government” or the “__ Party” for our collective woes is a game we no longer have to play. We can stop right now, and instead, ask, what can I do to make things better? How can I get involved in a way that I can affect positive change? What resources are available to me that could be used to help?
We’ve elected a president who agrees with this idea - that it’s time to earn that citizenship to the greatest nation on Earth, via the thoughtful application of varying degrees of blood, sweat and tears, rather than continuing on as little more than a brooding, dissatisfied customer.
Call this all empty rhetoric if you wish, and seek your inspiration and answers elsewhere. Life is for living, and this is Now, and I have chosen to embrace what I feel is real, rather than continue to mumble cynically from the sidelines for my own edification. It serves no purpose that I can see to act as if we were not in the world, outside of it, somehow maintaining our disinterest and absence of control over its fate while judging its inhabitants as ignorant and apathetic.
Done. Moving on.
