by ty | November 7, 2008
This morning on my way out of the hotel, i glanced at the requisite stack of USA Todays on the front desk and read a quick survey: Since Obama's victory, 67% of Americans feel "optimistic," "proud," or "excited." Only something like 23% feel pessimistic and about 17% feel "scared." For the umpteenth time in under a week, I teared up.
From the ecstasy of Tuesday night to the giddiness of Wednesday's morning-after astonishment to the apparent continuing reality of President-elect Obama, I, like everyone else, have been fascinated by what it all means. I went for a run in Prospect Park Wednesday morning and looked at every passerby for signs of some new shared reality - who are we now? Riding the subway, I was dying to know what everyone was thinking.
As the initial euphoria of the election begins to wear off, I've noticed that some people are beginning to add just a little edge of self-protective cynicism back into their voices. Not wanting to be disappointed by what will doubtlessly be an imperfect presidency, people are checking their excitement. "Well, we'll see what he actually does." "Well, this won't cure racism." Or as my mom's partner, who is African-American, said to me last night, "Yeah, but I still can't get a cab in D.C."
Obviously Obama's election is not going to change everything overnight. It remains to be seen what kind of an administration his will be, and how it will or won't change the way that we as Americans relate to each other and to the world. Still, I want to make the case for why our celebration and optimism are founded, regardless of what Obama ends up doing with his power; why we don't need to temper our joy with pessimism (more commonly called "realism" these days); and why this election truly is about us.
We create our leaders. They are us, in condensed form. Just as George W. Bush was the perfect reflection of our national apathy and appealed to our worst selves at exactly the time we as a nation embodied that spirit, Obama came forth out of our collective sense of what we could be, perhaps in direct contrast to what came before. En masse, we wore out the model of cynicism; we took it as far as we wanted it to go. McCain/Palin tried to take it further, using all the same techniques of the past eight years, and we finally said no.
Seizing the moment, Obama bet everything on the idea that our sense of optimism and hope, no matter how sublimated, was actually deep down who we are, our deepest instinct - deeper even than fear. Maybe the reason we are feeling so astonished right now is because he dared us to take that chance on ourselves, against the backdrop of perhaps the most cynical time in American history, in an atmosphere of such utter doom and gloom that we either had to agree to give up on ourselves and our world, probably for once and for all - or, simply argue for our own worth. That we chose the latter is nothing short of a triumph of the human spirit.
To me, the fact that 67% of Americans feel optimistic, proud, or excited right now means that change has *already* happened, on a national (and probably a global), internal, scale. And what we create in the world always starts internally, with ideas, and ideas come out of a sense of what is possible.
So - what is possible? Obama is willing to even go beyond "hope" to a true understanding of the nature of reality: as he said in his acceptance speech, "Anything is possible." Those of us who are in the business of uplifting others feel a great sense of relief that he is willing to go out on a limb and say the thing that we've staked our entire existence on. It feels like finally having external backup from a world that we've seen mostly laugh at us, or at best call us dreamers.
But don't take my word for it; take it from Malcolm Mitchell, a fifth grader at the Sojourner Truth School in Harlem, who I just read about on CNN.com. He said "[Obama] kinda motivated me because looking at the past, people say 'black men can't do this, black men can't do that'...you know, he's changing time, little by little. Women can vote now, and he's the first black president."
Because we argued against our own limitations, worlds have opened up for Malcolm Mitchell, and for all of us, on whatever level. That is already change. It will manifest in ways we can't predict. And *that* is exciting.
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by Toller, January 25, 2007
Aw Nate, i hope you are ok!