This election is crazy. It’s like a giant weight has been lifted; one friend said today he feels like he’s been fighting cancer for eight years, and woke up this morning cured. I understand that nothing will be better or perfect overnight, but at least we’re not veering off the tracks anymore.
Conservatives love to cite Castro and Stalin, but there’s danger in moving too far right too quickly—there’s Hitler and the Ayatollahs (most fascist states arise directly from overblown fear of socialism, now that I think about it…hmmm). Iran outlaws abortion and homosexuality; they teach Creationism in schools. If you’re driving a car that only steers one way, you will be forced to do illegal and dangerous things to keep moving. That’s why the Constitution has term limits, and checks and balances.
I really don’t expect Obama will reorient this country to a far-left position; I think he’ll force it back to where it should be and was, before the (im)moral (min)majority and corporate lobbyists derailed the Republican party, which will hopefully return to the values of small government and individual liberty which Bush betrayed, and no one trusted McCain-Palin to renew. This open letter to the Republican Party is pretty brilliant: precisely yes, I theoretically love what they say they stand for; they just don’t actually stand for any of those things! I mean, Eisenhower was a military hero who railed against the military-industrial complex, warning that every gun and warship is a theft from the American people: fewer schools, fewer hospitals, fewer roads. Goldwater was an intellectual elite who was super-pro-free-market, but also pro-choice and pro-gay in service to maximizing individual liberty. Those are Republicans I respect and seriously admire.
I live in the most exciting neighborhood in the bluest city in the bluest state. Maybe only the Bay Area can compete with “The People’s Republic of Cambridge,” but I really think we win.
My boyfriend noted it was like a “reverse 9/11″: everyone staggering around, in complete disbelief, unsure how to continue, but from joy rather than horror. And if they regard this as a horror, maybe Republicans will get a taste of how stultifying and horrible and helpless the past eight years have felt for me.
There was intense dancing in the streets last night. Even the MBTA drivers were in the spirit, honking horns on the buses going by; the cops stood back and let drum circles form, crowds cheer and chant, open containers pass unconfiscated. I spoke with a Kenyan girl about my age who said that her tribe and Barack Obama’s tribe spent most of this year massacring one another, and how proud she was to vote for him, because they are both Kenyans, we are all Americans, “those hatreds are for the older generations.” Of course, there were people there with cameras.
Every moment was that touching, that absorbing, that striking. I’m amazed and humbled. I’m so glad we decided to wander out onto the streets last night, and that I live where I do.
And can I just say PRETTY!——
No more (or much less) political talk after this. Promise.
