Democracy
I have to start this off by saying that Barack Obama's win has cleared some dust from my soul. The last time I was so proud of the country of my birth was between 17 and 20 years ago, perhaps because I was looking at a nation I had longed for through my teenage years. The years in uniform and afterward did not have that feel; surrounded by a sea of fellow young people 'on the college program' did little to maintain that feeling.
Tonight, that changed in a very fundamental way. It changed in a way that astounded me. And really, it has very little to do with Barack Obama himself as much as a new trust in the democratic system which I have been revisiting through Alexis de Tocqueville. Where I once was jaded by my former understanding that the United States ran on lobbyists and fickle voting procedures and machines, I became even more jaded over the last 8 years. I could not explain to myself, I could not rationalize, I could make no sense of why my former brothers-in-arms not only risked life and limb but lost them. I could not explain how I could have worked with navigation systems that should have been accurate and how there was so much 'collateral damage'. It made no sense, unless one connects the dots in a way that makes locking one's tapioca pudding in a refrigerator sensible.
And that's uncomfortable.
And then Barack Obama, against all of my own prejudices of the Presidential Elections, somehow managed to not only win - but to dominate the election. How did that happen? I have a few ideas on that which I will let coalesce, but the fact remains that the American people have spoken. Nay. They shouted, they cheered, and they demonstrated that they were above John McCain's campaign tactics. Well, most of America. And when I watched the acceptance speech, I was struck by a deep sense of something which defies words. In fact, that something - whatever it is - defines these words.
The world did not change tonight, as Obama said in his acceptance speech. The change is yet to come, but the potential for that change is here. There are dark days ahead, both in the United States and globally - the economies are eclipsed by their lack of economy; the state of the world is in question through hatred and animosity fueled by a lack of diplomacy; the environment of the world does not pass scrutiny.
So now there is a hope, and as young as I am and as old as I have become, I am struck by this strange word. Hope.
And yet at the core, democracy has demonstrated that it is a powerful force to be reckoned with - that it is possible to effect change through democracy.
And I pity President Elect Obama. He must bear the burden of the changes while protecting the flames of hope that got him elected. The American people have democratically chosen him to not only lead the United States but to break out those community organizer skills for the projects ahead. Why?
Because democracy isn't just voting. There's a lot of work to be done. And, like voting, it requires everyone to do their part. Everyone.
Defining 'everyone' is a bit of a trick as well. Something I will write more about after some sleep.
Blog reactions
No reactions yet.
- Taranis's blog
- Add new comment
- 278 reads
Re: Democracy
You were not here, Taran - so I will tell you what you could not see. This has been the most exhilarating election day that I have ever, in my 61 years, ever-ever seen. Walking around, there were few people who did not sport an "I voted" sticker somewhere on his person. There were high fives at the voting place, friends seeing one another and glad to be seen. People who have never voted in their lives voted today. They did not all vote for PE Obama.
Some had not done the research and believed so many of the lies that were circulating throughout the campaign. I spoke to a young lady that I love dearly and was told she had voted against Obama because he didn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegience. She never checked with Snopes.com - my standard for truth or lie; nor did she check the Washington Post fact-checker site for background, for facts. When I heard this beautiful young woman say this, I was struck with a fleeting feeling of guilt - I should have told her how to check this stuff, I should have realized how young she is. When she told me her mom voted the same way - I was aghast. I feel that I failed them somehow. Then I realized that it is not only up to me to crawl into their minds and show them the referenced answers to their questions and the dirtiness of the mudslingers. They were supposed to be doing it themselves. I'd forgotten that someone needed to show them how.
And today, in television interviews, I am still hearing partial truths, like the man who spoke of "spreading the wealth around" as an Obama policy that would take the hard work of his small business and fling it out to the masses. What he has been fed by the Obama Opposition is just that. In fact, there has been a system intact for decades that does just that. The IRS tax brackets require those who earn more to pay more. It is that simple. But reworded, as those supporting Mr. McCain did and publicized, it sound horrid. That was their purpose, perhaps knowing better than I that so many of us will take their word for it and not check the facts.
But there is time to check them now. The young lady I spoke to last night said she wished she had gotten the e-mails that debunked the information she had been fed. I could have done that, and I feel bad that I did not. But she can check now, and I hope she and many who were lied to about this fine man will do just that, and allow the unity to take place in this country that is going to move forward in a far different direction than the direction in which we have been pulled in the past eight years.
But the feeling of exhilaration continues this morning - in me and in those around me. We finally have a time coming, very soon, when the deciding figure in the White House will be considering those of us in the domestic trenches who have been robbed of our dignity, some of us our jobs and homes and savings, in the last eight years. There are still high-fives, smiles and a sense of joy rampant around me, and I am going to go to work now and enjoy it. But you should have seen it, Taran. It would have made you proud to have been born in the USA.
Pingback
[...] missed it, and admittedly, have been taken up with the election of President Elect Obama - something I felt quite personally - and I wonder at how his use of the media has not had the same effect as your own. You are a [...]