Five days ago my mother asked me in an email, with regard to some business affairs, to let her know "if there's anything you don't understand". I replied i don't understand why bernie madoff was released without bail this week, or why we haven't bloody revolted after 8 years of bush/cheney, but other than that i'm good.
In many ways I have denied myself the truth about how I've felt about the last 8 years. Most of this little diary has been written during Bush/Cheney, and at the time that the last changeover happened, I thought it was no big deal. I was really in denial. I hated the last administration. Not personally. I was never one of the people who thought Bush was insensitive or awful or inherently evil (Cheney I'm just not sure about). He was simply incompetent, incurious, and chose terrible advisors. In short, the opposite of my idea of a good leader. The thing that wounded me above all others was the complete lack of integrity: mistakes (like those of the Clinton administration) were buried, denied as if nothing happened. Those who brought them up for clear discussion were marginalized, whether they were inside or outside the administration's circle. This is the lowest form of being, this absence of any sense of responsibility. Without it no power can flow. And none did, despite the dumb terrorism and our dumb wars about terrorism, and everything else dumb that happened, 2001-2009.
2004 came and went and I just kept my head down. The one bright spot that year was the state senator from Illinois who gave his speech at the Democratic Convention. He said his first few words and I immediately said out loud that is our next president. I didn't know that, of course, and I make no claim to premonitions. What I was saying was really this: in my world, this is the kind of person that is fit for the Presidency. My kind of President.
And throughout the campaign for 44, I was rejoicing. Barack Obama was talking frankly about race, finally. But he wasn't race, he was a guy. He was against dumb wars and hit the GOP hard for it (I never got why Kerry was so dumb about this). He was not against wars of necessity. He asks people to be responsible for their own shit, the home base of power (see above). He has faith, real faith in real religion that believes in the divinity of all people, and yet he is a powerful intellectual. He spoke. In. Complete. Sentences. He was excellence defined. Early on I told those near me that I wanted to see him get beat up a little, to see what he was like under fire. It turns out under fire he is collected, and used every said opportunity to make allies and to speak in his own voice. His every action telegraphed Midwestern pragmatism, calm, smarts. He was unpredictable, in that conventional wisdom never could predict what he would do. My favorite picture from the campaign was created during the pundit panic that happened after McCain selected his Vice-Presidential candidate: a picture of him with the words "Everyone chill the fuck out. I got this." He could see beyond what others would want or need and create out of whole cloth a new realm for us to be in. He was a leader. My kind leader.
And here he is. And he does so got this.
This is moving to read.... Indeed, there's much repentance to be done by the citizens of the country as a collective. After all, it is a democracy, and a lousy administration is supported or condoned by its constituency. Also, when great wrongs are committed, denial is quite normal.
Your sight was amazingly keen, and I think that senator's speech struck an inner chord in you because you had no obstruction to see his will and merit.
Posted by: jason | 2009.01.24 at 07:02 PM