The End of an Error

[ellenkushner]

When GWBush won his second term, I wore black for a week - not in NYC, where this sort of thing is de rigeur, but in Cambridge, Mass., where earth tones predominate. And over the past 4 years I have often had the awful feeling that I was living in a ghastly alternate reality, where everything had gone wrong in the world, and particularly in my country. I'm not a very political animal. My complaints weren't always all that specific; just a general feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. O please, I begged, Let me jump back on the Time Machine to that point where a man who wasn't a disrespectful idiot was elected instead, one who cared more about the country and its people than about - oh, I dunno, being right or being too stupid to listen to those who actually were. Who did not make our nation and its aspirations a stink in the nostrils of the rest of the world. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare.

From which there was no awakening until today. deliasherman has given a lovely account of our inauguration viewing in the company of so many fellow-New Yorkers. I loved Barack's speech (see? already we're buds - just yesterday he was "Obama" to me - maybe it has to do with the size of that screen - all up-close-and-personal...). It was very Sound & Spirit to me: calling on the ancient virtues - and calling them by name! - while urging us to employ them in a new way, for a new world. And when he started extolling the risk-taking labors of our forbears, getting to, "For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops...." I was teary at last. It felt good to be so moved. It felt good to feel included, after so long apart.

I've been saying that no matter who took seat in the White House today, I'd feel huge relief. But with Obama's speech, I am filled with joy. Give me rhetoric, or give me death! And kudos to Rev. Joseph Lowry for some pretty fine stuff himself. I love a man who can quote scripture to good purpose. (Those of you who've never read the Bible because it's that stupid Religious Stuff and never even took "Bible as Literature" and missed all that, yah! boo! sucks! you're ignorant morons! As for Lowry's other references, I refer all to negothick's informed & informative post.)

I even liked his wife's dress. (Though Aretha's hat is the all-time best ever!!)

When the crowds thinned out some, Delia & I went up to the main, big theatre in Broadway's Symphony Space, in time to catch Bush getting into the helicopter to leave. As the commentators commentated, and the helicopter just sat there, people started chanting, "Go! Go! Go!"

Oh, and he did.

Good morning! Now, what's for breakfast?

Comments

[hoppytoad79.livejournal.com]

And over the past 4 years I have often had the awful feeling that I was living in a ghastly alternate reality...This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. O please, I begged, Let me jump back on the Time Machine to that point where a man who wasn't a disrespectful idiot was elected instead, one who cared more about the country and its people than about - oh, I dunno, being right or being too stupid to listen to those who actually were. Who did not make our nation and its aspirations a stink in the nostrils of the rest of the world. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare.

Surreal nightmare, ghastly alternate reality...however you want to describe it, the last four years have been like a really bad acid trip--only none of us had dropped any. Obama winning was the first huge step toward waking up from this nightmare. Now that the source of the poison has been purged, we can work in earnest on cleaning the rest of the wound, treating the systemic infection, and getting on the road to recovery.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

That was something that struck me too, reading through the speeches. Coming across the ocean to escape poverty. Sweatshops. I hadn't even realized, until then, how tired I am of invocations of Americanism that start with the Mayflower, proceed to the Revolution, and go on to covered wagons with (when trying especially hard for inclusiveness) a quick nod to those who were brought over against their will.

My people are American, dammit. They weren't with the Pilgrims and they didn't take covered wagons and not one of my direct antecedents has ever lived in an American small town or on a farm. None of them were in the country when the Golden Spike was laid or during the Civil War. My great-grandparents and grandparents came across from the 1880s to the 1920s, through Ellis Island, fleeing fear and poverty. They spoke English with heavy accents, worked two or three jobs, and made sure to educate their children as best they could. And it was nice, for once, to see them - us- included in the categorical list of Americans!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes!!

And I loved his inclusion of "non-believers" in his admirable list of faiths, as well.

This is someone who lives in the same world I do - for once.

[bgliterary.livejournal.com]

I agree to a point...but did he have to use the term "non-believer"? I believe in many things, just not in some religion inspired super being.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he had to: it's recognized Code for "no super-being", esp. in Protestant lingo. I suppose practicing Pagans can be huffy if they want to (esp. as they're now recognized among the fallen in military cemeteries - oops!). If I wanna get sniffy, I hope someday that we'll see something official not delivered by a Protestant male. (But now, I believe change will come.....!)

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Coming across the ocean, sweatshops, and slavery. I'm really impressed at how he handled the context there, all these immigrant narratives bound up together, inspiring but with no attempt to hide the ugliness.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Exactly! And his reminder to us that it took work and high-heartedness to get to where we are now. We are much too young a nation to be sinking into decadence so fast.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

You speak for me.

[rosenhaus.livejournal.com]

And because I've been wanting to say this for the last 8 years to Mr. Bush...

"And don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out."

Whew, that feels better.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oooo - check out Bob Garfield 's little precis on this week's "On the Media" analysing W's last press conference, in which Bush said "Thank you" to the members of the press.

Ah! Here it is:

From the transcript: (http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/16/01)

BOB GARFIELD: Oh, really? Thank you? I believed him when he said “you,” but I'm pretty sure “thank” isn't the verb of one syllable he had in mind, because for the past eight years this White House has mainly given the Fourth Estate and the First Amendment the finger.

The Bush Administration ridiculed the press, ignored the press, stonewalled the press, bullied the press, maneuvered around the press, co-opted the press, censored the press, jailed the press, fabricated for the press, lied to the press and, for example, when caught illegally wiretapping Americans without a warrant, blamed the press. [ . . . . ] So, yeah, no wonder the filterer-in-chief in his last press room appearance was suddenly so meek and deferential. Maybe he really was wistful. He did everything in his power to subvert the first rough draft of history but leaves office knowing that history will have its due.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It has been a honor to work with you. I meant what I said when I first got up here. I wish you all the very best. I wish you and your families all the best.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Mr. President, thank you. No, really. Thank. You.

You can hear the whole thing (<3 minutes) here:

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

OK, it's really 8 minutes, and I've posted it for all to see (or you can go to On the Media's site to download a podcast).

[ambitious-wench.livejournal.com]

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

I'm still euphoric.

[ewein2412]

I liked Lowry's speech BEST. It totally rocked.

[swimtech.livejournal.com]

You've only been feeling that way for four years? I've been feeling that way for eight. I mean, that Supreme Court decision that gave Bush the presidency was clearly the key junction that tipped us into Bizarroworld. I've been trying to get back to my own universe ever since. I think that finally, the multiverse has made some kind of vast cosmic correction.

I watched everything on a widescreen at work. It was wonderful.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, 8, of course - but any electorate can make a mistake the first time - it was the second election that broke my heart - esp. coming so soon after 9/11, which altered reality all by itself. It all started to feel like a bad SF novel.

Though I don't disagree about the Court the first time. Yeah, I guess so.

[swimtech.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that whole period of indecision and then the Court ruling felt so bizarre, I really did get that wrenching feeling very early on, and it only got stronger after everything began to go so terribly wrong.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I'd been saying all day how awesome "tanks into tractors" was. Lowery quoted Scripture in a way that made me HAPPY, unlike Warren who made me cringe.

[jess-ka.livejournal.com]

just a general feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

Very much the way I felt; and I couldn't quite believe we were actually going to have an articulate, compassionate person in the presidency until yesterday.

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Nicely said. The railroad metaphors I want are too much overused to express it: that we had gotten derailed, jumped the tracks, or at least gotten switched onto a bad siding somewhere; but that now we're back on a track we'd left a very long time ago. This feels like the right country again, that we're going in a good direction.

When I try to decide how long it's been wrong, I move from regretful to downright terrified. Has it been only these past 8 years? Or does it go back to when Reagan could get his laughs about the scariest words in English being "I'm from the government and I'm here to help"? Or farther back than that, even?

Perspective helps: maybe I can reconcile some decades of hateful politics as the national rip that LBJ predicted would be the result of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws of the 60s, and so that this election would be a sign of that rip beginning to heal over?

Anyway, I'm so glad to see Obama here and Dubya gone gone gone. If I never see another newspaper photo of that jackass "clearing brush" that'll be just fine. (Unless somebody plants a bunch of that Harry Potter tangleweed stuff.)