The national achievement last night defies words of any consecration or commemoration. Finally this country sees through our legacy of mystifying fear and prejudice. Dreamers, for once, have prevailed.
With a number of contenders sniping for visibility and sound bites, the presidential primaries proved far more interesting than the two-candidate race we now witness in the months leading to the November election. I admit the change we seek from that last seven years of Bush administration incompetence, nepotism and deception - may not amount to the dramatic policy sweep our country merits.
Yet, the choice between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain strikes me as overwhelmingly obvious.
From Glenn Greenwald’s post in Salon.com yesterday that discusses in part ”the twisted, petty personality-based themes that dominated” the 1988 presidential election and how they may factor in this year’s race for the White House–I found a link to a Washington Post piece about the challenge that candidate Sen. Obama faces in minting his own ‘brand’ of patriotism.
I won’t deny the factors of appearance and likability at play in a race for public office, but could we just once pry open the shell of this narrow notion of patriotism–lapel pins, flag saluting and cheerleading for national belligerance–and open the conversation to include such matters as the federal government upholding checks and balances established by the Constitution, defending civil liberties, and providing due process to those detained by the U.S. government? These principles define our country just as crucially as any flag waving gesture, no?
I like how a narrative from the Bible can sometimes capture, or serve as an emblem for, contemporary times. Babel seemed a civilization unified by one vision and one language until their arrogance caught its people up in a sudden blast of wind that thwarted their goal.
This I mention as today I cast my words into what feels like an oceanic clatter of voices drawn together–not in service of one vision, but by an infinite variety of motivations and intentions. Though I hesitate to admit it, I think the most fundamental impulse that writing on a blog reveals is the one inside each person that says ‘look at me!’–the longing to be acknowledged, which has often played out in human history on an unfathomable scale. The Denver hip hop act Flobots recently released the tune “Handlebars”, which illustrates this in a timely fashion.
Anyway, I look forward to contributing subsequent comments on politics and culture, wielding my oblique and, perhaps sometimes troubling, point of view about the human condition (why we do or say what we do or say); where fear throttles the senses and imagination (didja hear the one about Sen. Obama, Rev. Wright and Minister Farrakhan, who walk into a bar...?).