es martes ya? = is it tuesday yet???
Nov. 3rd, 2008 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabI've had this icon for over two years, and it has NEVER been more appropriate as it has been this week, as my ostrich-brain is hiding in House, to avoid obsessing about the election.
It's become, as it is for so many people I know, the city of LA, you guys, everyone in my family, everyone on Facebook, almost unbelievable that this election is here, that it's so soon, that we're going to have a black president, people! We're -- I can't even find the words in English. We're going to have a Democrat! Finally! We're going to (with any luck, and I refuse to think negatively on this point) have a Congressional majority -- maybe even 2/3! In 77 days this might be our country again, in the words of Senator Obama: We are the change we've been waiting for. (Provided we rock out tomorrow in force and in numbers, but that's for when I'm phone banking -- here I'm preaching to [largely] the choir.)
If I come back here at midnight tomorrow, if it's bad news, and read what I wrote above, there's no question I'm collapsing into a font of tears. Then again, I'd be doing that anyway. And what's more, I'm entitled. We're entitled. We've been raging against the machine for eight years. We're frustrated, we're angry, and we're tired. And I don't care if Sarah Palin thinks our reward is in heaven -- I don't believe in heaven. I believe in people. I want our reward tomorrow, for all we've been through.
I don't have a job; I can't afford my health care; I couldn't afford my car; my rights have been systematically stripped away; the government's tapping phones now; freedom of speech and freedom of association are artifacts we're going to tell our kids about with wistful nostalgia; we're building a fence between the US and Mexico(that one always pisses me off the most. Has anyone seen that Ford commercial that ran maybe a year ago, with the strummy American music as sons and fathers in their pickup trucks drive down to build their part of the fence to the tune of "we're real Americans" or something similarly nauseating?); the world hates us; the dollar sucks; trust, freedom, progressiveness and prosperity are gone in the face of fear-mongering and bigotry, and for eight long years the Republican party almost managed to convince the world that evolution and global warming were myths but that marriage somehow needed protection. Anyway -- this is all to say, we're entitled to some legitimate, stunned, defeated shock if Obama doesn't win tomorrow. Sometimes I even think, "what if this isn't my country? What if I'm the one who's wrong, un-American? What if this is the puritanical Christian conservative anti-science white heterosexual NIMBY country they've been trying to tell us it is for eight years?"
But then again, there's still that audacity of hope.
Which brings me back to my earlier statement: Tomorrow we will elect our first black president, a statesman and a Democrat with a sincere desire to undo the damage that's been done over the last eight years and restore this country to a progressive, diplomatic, prosperous nation worthy of global respect. We WILL (she said, audaciously). We're only 24 hours away.
Aren't you strangely excited for a generation from now when we get to tell the kids we were here?
#
YES, we MOTHERFUCKING *CAN.*
It's become, as it is for so many people I know, the city of LA, you guys, everyone in my family, everyone on Facebook, almost unbelievable that this election is here, that it's so soon, that we're going to have a black president, people! We're -- I can't even find the words in English. We're going to have a Democrat! Finally! We're going to (with any luck, and I refuse to think negatively on this point) have a Congressional majority -- maybe even 2/3! In 77 days this might be our country again, in the words of Senator Obama: We are the change we've been waiting for. (Provided we rock out tomorrow in force and in numbers, but that's for when I'm phone banking -- here I'm preaching to [largely] the choir.)
If I come back here at midnight tomorrow, if it's bad news, and read what I wrote above, there's no question I'm collapsing into a font of tears. Then again, I'd be doing that anyway. And what's more, I'm entitled. We're entitled. We've been raging against the machine for eight years. We're frustrated, we're angry, and we're tired. And I don't care if Sarah Palin thinks our reward is in heaven -- I don't believe in heaven. I believe in people. I want our reward tomorrow, for all we've been through.
I don't have a job; I can't afford my health care; I couldn't afford my car; my rights have been systematically stripped away; the government's tapping phones now; freedom of speech and freedom of association are artifacts we're going to tell our kids about with wistful nostalgia; we're building a fence between the US and Mexico(that one always pisses me off the most. Has anyone seen that Ford commercial that ran maybe a year ago, with the strummy American music as sons and fathers in their pickup trucks drive down to build their part of the fence to the tune of "we're real Americans" or something similarly nauseating?); the world hates us; the dollar sucks; trust, freedom, progressiveness and prosperity are gone in the face of fear-mongering and bigotry, and for eight long years the Republican party almost managed to convince the world that evolution and global warming were myths but that marriage somehow needed protection. Anyway -- this is all to say, we're entitled to some legitimate, stunned, defeated shock if Obama doesn't win tomorrow. Sometimes I even think, "what if this isn't my country? What if I'm the one who's wrong, un-American? What if this is the puritanical Christian conservative anti-science white heterosexual NIMBY country they've been trying to tell us it is for eight years?"
But then again, there's still that audacity of hope.
Which brings me back to my earlier statement: Tomorrow we will elect our first black president, a statesman and a Democrat with a sincere desire to undo the damage that's been done over the last eight years and restore this country to a progressive, diplomatic, prosperous nation worthy of global respect. We WILL (she said, audaciously). We're only 24 hours away.
Aren't you strangely excited for a generation from now when we get to tell the kids we were here?
#
YES, we MOTHERFUCKING *CAN.*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 06:23 am (UTC)Every time I think too much about the election I start crying--confused, happy, angry tears. It's taken us so long. And yet I didn't think I'd live to see a black president. I thought that the kind of town I grew up in, a small, virulently racist and homophobic, Jew-fearing, Asian-fearing, First Nations-hating, fundamentalist Christian town, was what America consisted of. I didn't realize that there were people who thought differently, besides me and my best (gay, black, mixed-race, and Jewish) friends, until I made it out and went to college. And now I get to see that the hate and fear that defined my childhood is not, in fact, how America works. We're bigger than that and we're better than that. And now maybe we'll prove it.
I'm in debt for school and my job sucks. I can't afford my healthcare so I skip visits and live with pain and fear. I've watched Canadians flood across our border to shop as our dollar dropped and then I've seen the flood dry up as the loonie crapped out. (Not six months ago I could count more BC license plates than Washington license plates in the parking lot at the mall.) My dad freaks out about retirement. My brother-in-law, who's been like a blood brother to me, gets deployed to Iraq over and over again. Right now, the government sucks, and it's done a lot of bad things. But America--the America that I love, not Palin's crazy patchwork--is bouncing back.
I'm going to see vindication in my lifetime. A black president and, maybe, gay marriage--and maybe a female president. It kills me. Maybe we're finally going to be the country I believe in. I was a crazy patriot as a kid. I believed that we could do no wrong. I went through disillusionment, but now I'm back, older, wiser, with a better perspective. I love my country and that means admitting that we can make things better, that sometimes we make mistakes.
Today at the store we bought champagne and donkey-shaped truffles. It was an expense, and we're poor, but dammit, I am ringing in Obama with style.