One good thing about Andiamo’s engine deciding to take an implosion break was that it got me back to land in time to watch the 2008 election unfold. And what a sight that was indeed! It was the antithesis to the disastrous, horrific and just plain criminal events that unfolded on that fateful Tuesday of November 7th, 2000. For as infamous as that election was, this election shall be FAMOUS, if not more.
If you had asked anyone, even just a year ago, if they ever thought that a black man, particularly a mixed-race black man with an arabic middle name, who was born in Hawaii, raised in both the United States and Indonesia, who scored #1 in his class at Harvard Law School, would have even a minute chance of EVER becoming President of the United States. I’ll bet that if you didn’t get a hearty dismissive laugh, you’d get a sure “NO FRICKIN’ WAY” in response.
Yet, it happened. In less than three months from now, Barack Obama will be president, as the world already knows. It’s such an amazing paradigm shift that I can hardly believe it. This is big.
As a now long-time expat, I greet this news with awe, relief (that the Bush-Rove-Cheney dictatorship is FINALLY over), and just a strange passionate glee that I haven’t felt about America in a long time. See, when people I meet on my travels ask me what I think about my country, I tell them that America used to be a shining star. We USED to be powerful, positive force that brought the world forward. In recent years, however, I have not been able to say that, and that hurt.
I suspect that at the very least, my sentiments about America will change for the better. It has already, considering that it was even possible for this election to happen. Despite all the problems that seem to be plaguing my once-great country, I have more hope now that the tide will turn and things will get better. Slowly.
My moderate, libertarian sensibilities nudge to me that Obama may shift things to an overly liberal direction in the country’s currently cold and oppressive climate. While I may cringe at this, I’ll also venture to think that maybe, just maybe, a good hard pendulum swing to the left isn’t such a bad thing. We’ve been leaning so hard to the right for so long, and a socially oppressive right at that, that a bit of a swing to the left may be just what we need to get things equalized again.
In any case, it’s nice to have something to feel good about America again.