America Says Yes To Hope
by taxi - November 5, 2008 12:50pm
When the polls closed on the west coast last night, and the countdown clock on CNN went to zero, I expected there to be another hour or more of election analysis. Honestly, I didn’t expect to see any definitive results, one way or the other, until I woke up this morning. And I had been preparing myself for the possibility of a McCain/Palin win, and even the possibility of protracted litigation and voting problems, such as we had seen before….
When the next thing to come up on the screen was that Barack Obama was the projected winner, however, I was left sitting there, agape…
“How can they call it so early?” I thought. I couldn’t believe that it was over at 11 pm. I quickly clicked the remote through all the Boston TV stations, then back through all the cable news stations. All of them, like a coordinated announcement, were saying that the election was over.
I remember seeing the tabulations for California, where the polls had just closed only a minute or two before, showing that only 1% of the vote had been counted there. Yet, all the news stations really were saying that it was over.
By quarter past eleven, I began to think that they must be right, that Barack Obama would now be the President elect. But what happened next plunged me back onto that state of just sitting there, agape… as John McCain gave his concession speech! He finished just before 11:30 pm.
“Is this really happening?” I remember thinking. Then, Barack Obama began his speech.
It all suddenly happened so fast…
For a short time, when I was only in my late teens, I went out with someone who was active in the civil rights movement. One day, in Boston, she asked me if I wanted to march in a demonstration, and I said I would. I don’t remember much about that day, but the one thing that I will never forget is marching in that demonstration and being hit in the shoulder with a rock. I saw that the rock had been thrown by a guy who, for all the world, could’ve been a relative of mine, …screaming at me for being a disgrace to the white race. The street we marched down was lined with white people, white people who looked just like me, and they were all screaming hate. That was over forty years ago.
Last night, as I watched Barack Obama’s speech I felt a twinge in my shoulder, and I saw tears in Jesse Jackson’s eyes.
Yes, this past two months of the Presidential campaign has most definitely been about whether the white racists in our country will continue to rule. This morning, I can say, “Buh-BYE” to Sarah Palin, the cheerleader for racial hatred and fearmongering. Her two months in the national spotlight is finally over. I fully expect her to continue revivifying the Ku Klux Klan, wherever she can. This morning, though, I can say with some sense of certainty that the tide has finally begun to turn in my country…
But this morning is not as great a nation-wide victory against prejudice and hate as it could have been. And it’s not only California that has voted to take rights away from one of the tiniest minorities in our society, because John McCain’s home state of Arizona has done so, as well.
This prejudice and hate was overwhelmingly financed by the self-righteous, the fully indoctrinated, and the factions in our society that demand everybody believe what they believe. It was financed by those who insist that everyone obey them.
I refuse to obey them. I refuse to believe what they believe. But I will never champion any cause to take away their right to believe, or to practice what they believe will bring them happiness. And that, dear reader, is the difference. The spirit of America is not to make everyone conform, but to allow freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the freedom to pursue happiness in all of our own, unique, and personal ways.
I dare to hope that someday, and that day has moved a little closer after last night, …that someday this real hope of individual freedom in America can truly shine, unimpeded and untarnished, in a world without hate, without prejudice, and without fear.
Barack Obama, however, is not a savior. He is not a magician. And he is nothing more than a man with a great talent. I admire him and I voted for him, but I will not blindly believe that his mission in the coming years will be unimpeded, without problems, or any sort of earth-shattering change for the world. In the next two years, the Democrats have one chance to turn the tide of corruption in Washington. In this, there is some hope.
That is what I voted for.