for those of you who do not share my bizarre obsession with events economical, I thought I’d bring this to your attention:
And you might also notice that as a function of time, we’re actually doing worse than they were on day 300 of the great D.
May you live in interesting times, eh?
Anyone who has heard me wax eloquent about politics (and not run away at the first opportunity) knows I’m hardly a huge fan of the democrats, and this especially includes Barack Obama. I’ve listened to and read his actual policies and he strikes me as a center-right politician of above average oratorical skills. I don’t agree with him on much. I obviously think he is vastly preferable to George Bush, but I wish that I didn’t have to compare my political candidates to murderous tyrants who should be impeached.
Last night I forgot about all of that. I tried really really hard to be the grinch that stole christmas. I did. I tried to remember Obama’s stance on Iran, and his weird middle line on gay marriage and the hundred other issues that I care about. But it didn’t matter. I got on the phone with my sister and I cried. My father was born in 1942. He participated in sit-ins in rural, segregated Virginia. He was the defendant in the seminal civil rights case, Johnson vs. Virginia, which went to the supreme court and desegregated the court systems a few years after Brown vs. Board of Education. He told me stories, growing up, of how he had to sit in the balcony of his town’s theater, because the gallery was reserved for whites. He didn’t mind, because the balcony had the better seats anyway. My dad saw a black man get elected president yesterday. My mom walked home from school during the DC riots after MLK was assassinated. She saw a black man get elected president yesterday.
I’ve had none of those experiences, but I saw Jesse Jackson in the audience during Obama’s speech and I thought: my god, none of us really thought this would happen. None of us. So, I’m happy. Inasmuch as Obama represents a moment utterly beyond himself, beyond his actual positions on actual issues, beyond any sort of mundane partisan victory: I’m proud that America managed to get here.
open vein, write story 