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 Written by:
Darren Haber
09/28/2008
Maybe it's because I'm somewhat OCD by nature, but I've found myself becoming ever-more addicted to news concerning the election. Could it be the delayed gratification of Republicans finally getting (sort of) their due, after 8 long years of incompetent governance? Could it be a pseudo-idealization of my generation's JFK? Perhaps a deep archetypal need to find a hero-projection of sorts, in an increasingly cynicized media landscape?
Perhaps all of the above. I think what drives it overall is probably a strong hunger for justice. I honestly believe the war in Iraq has been tremendously and unfairly hard on the men and women who have served there (many now lost in the byzantine snarl of government-funded healthcare), on U.S. taxpayers (in ways just now becoming manifest) and on just about everyone who thinks rationally and has had to stomach the bloviating, numbskull rationalizations of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. Hearing war defenders say that victory is "just around the corner" is like hearing an addict say that "next time it'll be different"; when neocons carp that the war could have gone better if only it were more properly "executed" is to willfully ignore the painful lessons of Vietnam -- and, in my darker moments, reminds me of Soviet apologists who say that communism could have been dandy if it weren't for Lenin and Stalin. (Opposites are always made for each other; in some ways, Hussein was a perfect foil for Bush -- once he was gone, it was truly "mission accomplished" in the comic book cowboy fantasy world of our soon-to-be ex-president.)
So yes, some kind of moral indignation is at work here (not necessarily a good thing for a person in recovery)...but it's also the need to find some kind of "good father" who will put our country under at least competent stewardship. I'm too realistic to expect true heroism from our political leaders; politics is about compromise most of the time, but still... What we've seen in the last 8 years has been a travesty, and perhaps I've just become numb to my own outrage, since each new screw-up from Bush and his sycophants seems to outdo the last.
Obama would not be perfect. (There are things about him that irritate me already.) The hope, though, is that he would at least believe that government might and should serve the public, instead of being a loathsome obstacle on the road to free-market dominance. At the least, the hope and prayer is that we would not be subjected to another Katrina: unmerciful images of U.S. citizens, citizens of the richest nation on the planet, sitting in filth and hunger in a sports arena while the middle class and wealthy drive their SUVs out of town. There may not be hope for perfect justice, but I can't help but start to crave a little mercy, especially for those who've been thrown under the bus of misfortune.
So hope is hope, and we need it. At least, I do.
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Re: Election Projection
By MikeB on
10/25/2008
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Re: Election Projection
By rachgirl on
11/03/2008
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Re: Election Projection
By danM45 on
11/04/2008
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Re: Election Projection
By mylife37 on
11/05/2008
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