Whew, America...just, wow. Thank God.
The election is over, and I'm not afraid to say it: I'm damn-glad-ass happy Barack Obama is back in office, for four more years. No, he ain't perfect. Yes, he's fucked up along the way, and there is still a lot of work to do. I just feel better about that work getting done with him in charge.
Nothing against Mitt Romney (who, let's be honest, is probably a salt-of-the-earth guy, even if his salt is a little more refined and harder to get for people outside of his tax bracket. I kid), but I really wasn't sure about an America in which we said no to Obama after only one term. It was a ground-swelling event for him to get elected the first time; I remember arguments with family members who, while not racist in their hearts, probably took the idea of a black man being in charge about as well as you would expect white Southerners of a certain age and generation to take it. I related to Obama because I grew up without a dad in the picture, just my mom and her parents, my maternal grandparents, as my family (well, we've got a shitload of relatives, but in terms of immediate family, for a long time it was me, my mom, my grandparents, and my aunt and uncle who were only a few years older than me and thus like older siblings).
I stayed up until two o'clock in the morning to watch Obama's speech because on some level, I didn't want to go to sleep and wake up to Florida in 2000, when the shit hit the fan and we entered what would become, in my humble and well-informed opinion (I'm a history buff), the worst period in the history of our nation. At least Nixon got close to getting impeached; George W. Bush was inexcusably inept except in the arena of making us more divided. That shit-turd jackoff will rot in hell for starting the Iraq War. I took his victory in '04 even harder, which is why I can sympathize on some level with the torrent of self-abuse and grief on the GOP side of things. But shit happens.
Sean Hannity, who really isn't relevant anymore anyway, now blames America for re-electing Obama. Donald Trump is apoplectic, Bill O'Reilly is splotchy with a chance of rain, and the entire right-wing movement in this country has to be shaking its collective head in disgust at what it sees. God, it's great to be an American right now.
Patriotism is not a provinince of one party or another; as someone who first would've classified himself as a Republican (everybody else was around me, and I grew up when Reagan was president, so it was only natural) and then found himself more in line with the Democrats (Bobby Kennedy is a personal hero of mine), I know there are good, decent, hard-working and ethical people on both sides of the debate. Then there's your Rushs and Glenn Becks of the world. If I seem more aware of the right-wing hypocrites, it's not because there aren't any on the left. I just can't think of any prominent ones. By all means, let me know what left-wing equivalents there are to Sarah Palin and her ilk.
The Germans have a word for taking pleasure in other people's pain (schadenfreude, I think that's how it's spelled); in that case, Fox News is my bitch. You have never seen a more low-rent and distasteful enterprise in your life (the old Star Wars line about Mos Eisley comes to mind). To see them weeping and gnashing their teeth...well, I just wish Hunter S. Thompson was around to see it.
Four more years, no they're not going to be easy. And no, I don't think everyone will be farting lollipops and unicorns by the bushel. But I have hope for America, a hope that took a beating over the past election cycle because it seemed like cynicism was going to win. For now, that tide has been beaten back, and if we're lucky we can outgrow the downright childish behaviour that certain political hacks mostly on the right seem to feed on. It's our country, dammit, now let's make something of it.
God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America!
No comments:
Post a Comment