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

[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.