Yesterday I was walking home after work and enjoying being out in the early evening. I took photos with my phone because I wanted to be able to remember my walk home on Election Day. The clouds and the dusk were so portentous and beautiful looking. (I kind of want to incorporate the word “gloaming” now, but I won’t.)
When I got home I crashed, and Richard woke me up from my nap and hustled me off to our friends’ apartment to watch the coverage…
I was talking to Jen this morning about the amazing results of the election, and about how it didn’t feel real yet. Her dad is a staunch right-wing Christian conservative, the kind that gets his news from Fox and bizarre gossipy e-mails forwarded between friends (I know the kind– I used to get those from my family in backwoods Spokane before I “opted out”– the kind of e-mails that no one who had ever been taught critical thinking skills would ever believe). Talking about him was kind of a downer and a reminder… [1]
Almost everything seems so bright and new, now. Is there anything wrong with fantasizing that the next eight years will be the best years in our country’s living memory? (It goes without saying that in my fantasy Obama will be re-elected!)
I’m barely 30, but I’ve already witnessed and lived and voted in a shameful period of American history– and hopefully I will get to witness its beautiful rise out of the ashes of this failure. During Obama’s campaign I started to feel a fluttering of true patriotism in my heart.
It’s strange, but I remember even in elementary school being confused and dismayed by the patriotic motions we were made to go through. Prior to the last four years, I never felt truly patriotic. Patriotism always seemed irrational and spoon-fed, something I didn’t really understand, something that teachers taught me in elementary school (”Hands over your hearts! Recite the pledge! YES you have to!”) and adults argued about at home. Fast forward many years… at a certain point during Dubya’s tenure something in me broke, and I became so angry that people in office were fucking up my country. How dare they say that because I wanted our soldiers to come home that I was unpatriotic and that I didn’t love America? How dare they? (When did I fall in love with America the Land? When did it become “my” America?)
Anyway, I guess that is the short version of how I learned the meaning of patriotism.
In closing, may I mention how excited I am to have a literate, well-spoken President-elect? I couldn’t even listen to Dubya’s voice on the radio or watch his face on TV for the last 8 years because he creeped me out so much. I just got my news from the web. There was something so wrong about his manner of speaking– so aggravating. Something that reminded me of all the evil people in my childhood.
And to Jen’s father, who is still pondering whether Obama may or may not be the antichrist, I say, “Is it any wonder that we seem to be elevating Obama to ‘godlike’ status? When an articulate, educated, thoughtful, even-tempered person stands next to a bumbling, foolish dry-drunk prone to embarrassing superlatives, of course he’s going to seem ‘godlike’.”
O-BA-MA!
[1]One of the most important things I’ve learned in therapy is that there are some people who you just can’t reach, at all– there’s nothing you can do to change them. It says a lot about Jen that she is still able to love her dad when he believes such ridiculous things. It says a lot about me that I have trouble loving ridiculous people.
