Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Relief

The long election is finally over, and for the first time in quite a while, there is a result I feel very happy about, mostly. Of course, Proposition 8 passed, and I am not pleased about that. For those of you who are out of state, 8 is the anti-gay marriage amendment. I feel about this as I do about all directives forbidding anomalies: difference is healthy and normal. Forcing people to adhere to one's own idea of normality, except in cases where carrying out these practices harms or victimizes others, is a bad idea. So I regret very deeply this law, though I feel the issue is far from settled.
As far as the top of the ticket is concerned, I, along with many many others, was thrilled and could not believe what I was seeing. As the numbers rolled in, it was clear that I had not been alone during these 8 years of exile. Others obviously felt just as strongly about Bush's abuse of the office of the Presidency as I. Now we will see what a whole new perspective on these issues can do for us.
I feel hopeful that Obama, being as smart and shrewd as he is, will gather excellent advisors around him, and has available to him the brightest and most enthusiastic people in the world. He will also have the support of other nations, who were cheering him on from the sidelines during the election. This will go a long way toward helping him to make crucial decisions in the coming years.
I am interested to see who his cabinet will be and how exactly he changes things. It will give me a good reason to read the paper and listening to the news, something I gave up doing for a long time after 9-11 and during the interminable and awful Bush years.
Though I have thought of the US as being full of pinheads and bigots, there must be a lot of people out there who do not meet this description, to have elected the first African-American president. I hope that his model changes the dynamic for black and other Americans of color.
To borrow a phrase, this makes me feel proud of America for the first time in a long while.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is indeed a rare moment of national pride.

Robbi N. said...

I think most of us are very moved by it. However, the country still seems too polarized for comfort. Look at that big block of red states. Sometimes I think it would have been better for the south to have stayed a separate country because we have never shaken that problem, essentially. Yet we have moved further forward by electing a black man to the presidency than I ever thought possible. So I'll try to be more positive about the future of the US.