I suppose I got caught up in the emotion of the night due almost exclusively to the genuine and copious tears of black Americans. The ones I spoke to and interviewed were nearly speechless with joy. With a start, I realized something that had escaped me all these long months of writing and thinking about this race. For many African-Americans, this election was a spiritual event, something that transcended the corporeal and brought to mind ancestral yearnings and desires for freedom.
For perhaps many blacks, Obama is the word made flesh — the redemption of the promise in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” The small sample of blacks I interviewed all spoke of the shattering of barriers, the hope that an Obama presidency would translate into a more just society, and the belief that for them personally, their lives would never be the same.
It struck me then and now that the world has turned upside down. When I was a boy, a black man could not get a sandwich at a lunch counter in much of the country. Now a black man has been elected president of the United States, receiving more votes from whites than his predecessor of 2004.
Where I come from, no matter how smart you are, no matter how hard you work you are extremely unlikely to ever achieve the kind of success that is available to citizens of the U.S. If by some unbelievable stroke of fortune you do achieve it, you will be taxed very heavily, penalized really, for your efforts. There is no can-do spirit. There is nothing like the “American Dream” because that dream exists nowhere but here.
Everything that I have learned about President Elect Obama leads me to believe that he does not cherish the American Dream. He does not believe in it, although, ironically, he is a prime beneficiary of it. He would rather remake this country in the image of those his friends and allies like William Ayers cherish. Socialist countries. Communist countries.
In the decade I have lived here, I have come to realize just how precious the much maligned “American Dream” really is. I was taught as a university student in Canada that it is a fiction, but I have learned through living here that it is real. Socialism is not the answer for this country. America has made a devastating choice this election. I only hope that he will not be able to change this country so much that it will be unrecognizable in four years.
I hope that Obama’s actual performance in office won’t merit these fears, but I fear portia9’s concerns are well-founded.
Are “closeted” conservatives/libertarians/hawks in creative fields the “new gays”? There’s an excellent very relevant (to me) comment thread over at neo’s titled “Hope for the post-boomers?”, with lots of great, thoughtful contributions so far.
I may drop by later this weekend and add a comment from my own experience if I can find some writing time. But first, I’ve got a baby room to paint! (A task for which I am only too happy to use the plastic sheeting I bought years ago in preparation for a worst-case scenario biological or chemical jihadist attack — a scenario that I’m grateful has not yet and I hope never will come to pass.)
The bigotry aimed at the South never ceases to amaze me. Indeed, it is astounding to me how the left tells us we need to understand the nuance of, say, the Jihadi mind in all of its shades of gray, but when it comes to the voting habits of law-abiding white North Carolinians all you need to know is that if a white hand pulls a lever for a Republican politician, that hand must be attached to a racist.
Macworld 2008 is here this week, and, true to form, Steve Jobs’ Tuesday keynote presentation included some pretty neat product announcements. Randy Newman’s accompanying song-form political rant, however, should in a sane world be an embarrassment to Apple. Seems like this should be getting a lot more critical attention.
I found Newman’s performance pretty offensive, but watch the whole thing and judge for yourself. Apparently the song — titled “A Few Words In Defense of Our Country” with no small measure of irony — is an existing element of Randy Newman’s repertoire, which makes it seem implausible that SJ didn’t know what was coming. The song is on the iTunes Store, and several videos of Newman’s performance are now up on YouTube, including this one with helpful subtitles added. (You can also find Newman’s performance in the streaming Macworld Keynote video, if you fast-forward to 1 hr. 18 mins.)
On reflection, I’m not entirely sure what to make of his muddled message. The favorable comparison of our present leadership to historic figures such as Hitler and Stalin, if meant as a compliment, has surely got to be about the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever heard. With defenders like Newman, who needs enemies?
Oh, and apparently it’s PC now to publicly use terms like “tight-assed Italians” (as long as you’re referring to conservative justices on the Supreme Court)? Geez.
For good measure, he even capped it off with a little “I usually root against corporations” talk, and rehashed for us once again the familiar tired accusations of “Empire!”. (I’m willing to bet he hasn’t had the good fortune of reading Bill Whittle’s brilliant 2002 piece on the topic.)
“The end of an empire is messy at best,
and this empire is ended like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave and the home of the free
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.”
Yes, goodbye Randy. And next time, if you really want to help us out, please, just stop helping.
There are apparently two Randy Newmans. The Randy Newman we all know writes little ditties for PIXAR flicks and television shows and from the lyrical content of those themes, you might suspect that he’s a big sweetie. Then there’s the Randy Newman who showed up at Macworld 2008’s keynote address. That Randy Newman is quite insane.
I guess that’s one Randy Newman for each of John Kerry’s two Americas?
I’ll be at work today, but will try to follow events in the blogosphere and post links here when I can.
Looking back on my 2006 and 2005 memorial posts, I’m struck by how little seems to have changed in my perception of our general mood, the challenges we face, and the shape we’re in. I hold out hope that things will improve (what can I say, I’m an optimist), but I regret to say it doesn’t seem likely that the situation will change anytime soon.
If I had said in late 2001, with bodies still being pulled from the wreckage, anthrax flying through the mail, pandemonium reigning at the airports, and bombs falling on Kabul, that by ‘07 leading Democrats would be ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker, I’d have been thought mad. If I’d predicted that a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11, and that the eleventh of September would become an innocuous date for parental get-togethers to talk about potty-training strategies and phonics for preschoolers, people would have thought I was crazy.
…
But it’s important to remember that from the outset, the media took it as their sworn duty to keep Americans from getting too riled up about 9/11. I wrote a column about it back in March of 2002. Back then the news networks especially saw it as imperative that we not let our outrage get out of hand. I can understand the sentiment, but it’s worth noting that such sentiments vanished entirely during hurricane Katrina. After 9/11, the press withheld objectively accurate and factual images from the public, lest the rubes get too riled up. After Katrina, the press endlessly recycled inaccurate and exaggerated information in order to keep everyone upset. The difference speaks volumes.
…
There are plenty of arguments one can have about the Iraq war and the uses and abuses of 9/11, but I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that the disagreements over the Iraq war are expressions of divisions that long predate it. The culture war, red vs. blue America, Bush hatred, Clinton hatred, and radical anti-Americanism poisoning much of the campus Left: All of these things were tangible landmarks on the political landscape long before the invasion of Iraq.
It has certainly seemed that way to me.
Also, David Rusin at Pajamas Media asserts that we should not only remember 9/11, but remain [constructively] angry about the events of that day and their aftermath.
It’s been nearly six long years since a catastrophic attack on our shores, and we’ve understandably turned to infighting and second-guessing — about everything from Guantanamo to wiretaps.
But this six-year calm, unfortunately, has allowed some Americans to believe that “our war on terror” remedy is worse than the original Islamic terrorist disease.
We see this self-recrimination reflected in our current Hollywood fare, which dwells on the evil of American interventions overseas, largely ignoring the courage of our soldiers or the atrocities committed by jihadists. Our tell-all bestsellers, endless lawsuits and congressional investigations have deflected our 9/11-era furor away from the terrorists to ourselves.
I was hardly alone in thinking that some sort of permanent change towards greater unity had occurred. Everyone, Republican and Democrat, seemed somber and serious, interested in fighting this evil that had existed for many years but seemed newly competent in its ability to inflict harm, and far more viciously hate-filled than had ever before been appreciated.
Gerard Vanderleun—writing shortly after the shattering and powerful experience of watching the towers fall from a close vantage point as he stood amidst the crowd that had gathered on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade—expected change as well, that Americans would be filled hereafter with “a terrible resolve” and a unity of purpose, as in WWII. And this thought was shared by many, including me.
Perhaps, as Norman Podhoretz writes in this new piece on the sixth 9/11 anniversary, it might finally be the end of widespread America-hating on the Left, and the defeat of the “Vietnam syndrome.” He himself hoped for it. But he also knew the Left very well, far better than I:
On the one hand, those who thought that we had brought 9/11 down on ourselves and had it coming were in a very tiny minority–even tinier than the antiwar movement of the early ’60s. On the other hand, they were much stronger at a comparably early stage of the game than their counterparts of the ’60s (who in some cases were their own younger selves). The reason was that, as the Vietnam War ground inconclusively on, the institutions that shape our culture were one by one and bit by bit converting to the “faith in America the ugly.” By now, indeed, in the world of the arts, in the universities, in the major media of news and entertainment, and even in some of the mainstream churches, that faith had become the regnant orthodoxy.
But even Podhoretz didn’t foresee how quickly they would regroup, how strong they would get, and how closely they’d follow the Vietnam template of the 70s. In fact, the only thing that seems to have prevented a repeat of those years (at least, so far) is the fact that the antiwar group lacks enough votes in Congress to override a Presidential veto.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
