OK. We voted.

5 November 2008

OK. This is the un-fast, the de-fast, the post-fast or maybe the ex-post fasto? Who cares? But the election is complete, there are tears of joy and tears of sorrow, rejoicing and lamenting, praises being sung and curses being muttered. Jesse Jackson is crying on TV in Chicago and Dick Cheney probably wants to shoot someone, anyone, in the face. A strong voice and message have gone out and has been heard, and the American electorate has answered. Good faith efforts have been made (mostly) all around, some scoundrels have been up to no good and there have been endorsements and recriminations. Lies have been told, along with lies about lies, and claimed truths have been revealed not to be. Outrageous charges have been made, disclaimers uttered, statements colored and false colors washed away by revelation, research and FactCheck.org. And ACORN…well, ACORN screwed up a little. At least they aren’t Muslims. Thank God. Oops, sorry. And Diebold. Anybody seen Diebold? Oh. He’s hanging out with chad in Florida.

I think I have heard every outlandish remark and claim and counter-claim I can imagine, from both sides, and I have been prompted, prodded and cajoled to either praise or condemn one side or the other, and I know as many poor souls who are delirious this morning as I do who are miserable and believe hell has frozen over and that Armageddon is just around the corner. Some of my friends fully expect me to yell “Victory!” and “Hosanna!” from the nearest available rooftop, and to roundly condemn those “evil people” who have just been soundly trounced (at least George is almost gone; that’s good for something). Still others might expect to be chastised and are perhaps awaiting some condemnation, waiting for me to say , “Ha! I told you so!” Well, I’m not here to tell anyone anything. But…

As a licensed practitioner of knee-jerk reactions, I find myself in the odd position of being able to whole-heartedly not act with complete discrimination in favor of or against anyone. I am forced right at this moment to say, “Stop it. Cool your heels. Let’s take stock before we go off wildly with any uncontrolled bursts of steam, either to the left or to the right.” Let’s take a look at what just happened, look at the risks in the front of us and the pitfalls that loom ahead if we lurch too far, too fast, without looking at whence we came and where we might be able to go…preventing our taking large knives to our noses in spiteful acts of unbridled jubilance or unrestrained hatred. Didn’t know that knives were connected to your knees, did you?

There rests little doubt that a vast contingent of US voters decided that they had had enough of what has been going on ever since Ron Reagan let “trickle down” become the national political watchword. We all caught a big break during the Clinton years, but the last eight have been killers. Put simply, the voters spoke up on 11/4/08 and decided that they were done letting “compassionate conservatism” ( it was neither) drive the nation into a broad, ugly, muddy ditch on the side of the road of humanity. Anybody remember the word “quagmire”? Or Rummy’s infamous “slog”? We have been there. We have done that. We are in that. And it stinks. The hope for many is that we have found a tractor called Obama. The hope is that we have found an exit strategy from the ditch. That would be a nice change.

Over the past many months, “enough” became more than enough and the words “change” and hope” seemed to be the words people most wanted to hear. Barbara said to me last night, “He had the message”. And “He” did. And although “He” is not “the one” (sorry Oprah), he also had the delivery methodology, the delivery machinery and the composure to make that message heard above the din and the roar of the plaintive (but sometimes vicious) yelps for more of the same. I was stunned and amazed by the steady drum beat from the right, that got even louder, as the economy crumbled, the poor became poorer and the war debt became larger. It was as if a wolf’s leg was caught in a steel trap and it was pleading, “Please don’t free me from this. After I bleed to death, I won’t remember it anymore.” (Of course what they were really saying was that if you let a black man take the helm, the white race is doomed. But you can’t say that in the New York Times.) Except for Joe Biden and Ted Stevens and few others, it seemed like the time had come to end the rule of old, white-haired men paired up with snarmy Texas swamp-rats like W and Tom Delay.

At any rate, on the day after, I have these observations:

By 8:00 AM this morning, after months and months of endlessly relentless pleas for political donations, my email box had no less than 11 requests from non-profits and lobbying groups, asking for more donations. I think I smell opportunism. Nothing has yet changed. Business as not unusual but very quick on the uptake.

Obama’s acceptance speech was well written and of course delivered in his usual, flawless manner. But he forgot to mention welfare, the need for extended unemployment benefits, the collapsing industrial base, or health care. And for what they spent on the set-up in Grant Park, we could have made damn sure no child got left behind in Chicago or maybe even all of Illinois and Indiana. Got any change left over after that blow-out? I saw Oprah there. Maybe somebody should have asked her to pay for it. That would have been a nice change. Or am I hoping for too much? Should I be surprised that he dodged some issues while basking in the limelight?

Three people have told me already today that if McCain had sounded more like his concession speech when he was on the campaign trail, he might have gotten elected. Thank goodness he didn’t: we might have elected the “real” McCain who would have been the spokesperson for the “real” America of Sarah Palin. No change there, either. Hopeless.

This election cycle cost way too much and took way too long. What took us 21 months, the Brits do in six weeks for a lot less money. The fact that Obama had $100M in the bank, going into the last week of the campaign, and that the RNC spent $150,000. on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe is both obscene and embarrassing. The carbon footprint left behind by the jets, criss-crossing the country should make Al Gore violently ill, but he said nothing. That ain’t change. Nor is it small change.

And they flew Sarah home to Wasilla to vote?

Throughout the election cycle there has been non-top talk of God, godlessness and prayer and infidels. No less than four people have asked me, just within the last week, about the Founding Fathers and their stance on the separation of Church and state: I found that curious, in the midst of all of this, but nonetheless, the Fathers fought vehemently for separation. Despite the fact that a majority of the American population believes to the contrary (and that Jonah was really swallowed by a whale and all that), this was never supposed to be a Christian nation, and “God” got inserted into the national dialogue and the Pledge of Allegiance only because it became politically expedient in order to raise money and make people feel guilty. And despite the fact that “god” and “prayer” have been invoked by every politician in front of a camera or a newspaper reporter for the past many months and years, I was extremely grateful that Obama’s acceptance speech did not mention God even once…at least that I remember. Of course, let’s not forget again that he didn’t mention health care, either. And let us also not forget that Elizabeth Dole, down in red ole’ something Carolina, managed to call her opponent, a Sunday school teacher and Presbyterian church elder, “godless”. Liz lost, incidentally. But I don’t see or smell change there, either. Same old, same old and I don’t see any hope in it.

However, Sarah Palin is gone. Poof. Good riddance and shame on us for all going gaga over goofiness. And Joe Biden had better live up to his rep. First I have to get over his being a lawyer. Like Dan Quayle. Change? Can he spell potato(E)?

I have heard the words “landslide”, “overwhelming” and “dramatic” to describe the Democratic victory. The Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, in the NYT this morning, had a short column which ended simply by saying, “Now the work begins”. The only “change” we will see, or can “hope” to see is only going to come after some damned hard work. This big ole’ truck is axle deep in that muddy ditch and it will take a lot more than Barack’s smiling face, soothing words and a shiny new tractor to pull it out. And the ditch is lined with greedy congressmen, all future prey for the next generation of lobbyists. “Oh, look! There’s Trent Lott!” (Anyone who does not believe that Obama has a battle royal to fight, just there, is not being realistic.) There is an old saying that, “Good luck and success usually come only after lots of blood, sweat and tears”. We should all caution ourselves not to be too naïve as to believe anything big will happen. otherwise.

FactCheck.org has been publishing disclosures and revelations about the claims being made by both candidates for weeks. A great deal of what has been promised is either not possible or unlikely, mostly because the economy is in the tank (Hank Paulson is with Diebold and Chad in Florida, by the way). For anyone to expect too much too soon or too fast would be a tragic mistake. Obama said on Tuesday night that he would always “tell us the truth” about what is going on. We should hold his feet to the fire. If he doesn’t stick to that promise, there will be no change. The Straight Talk Express wasn’t and we still have unanswered questions about gargantuan issues facing the nation and the world.

I am ecstatic that we have turned a corner when it comes to race relations and color barriers. But when I look at the map and see large blotches of red (as in blood) extending across vast areas of the country, or see small patches of blue surrounded by large patches of red in places like Texas (crap, that’s where I live),I realize that there is hatred and indifference there and that there are bigoted attitudes, as well. I cannot count the times I have heard people speak privately to me in recent days about their fears for Obama’s safety. And when McCain gave an almost acceptable concession speech, even within the confines of his “invite only” post-election party (just who is being elitist, now?), there came boos and the ugly sounds of sore losers and closet-racists. (Of course, he and Ms. Palin spent weeks stirring up that hostility and no one should have been surprised by its’ presence at the Biltmore.). I may be delighted and pleased and hopeful and rejuvenated, but I’m not stupid, either. And neither should you be. I may be ecstatic about some aspects of what has transpired, but I am chagrined that McCain could not have been more forthright and more true to his background. But then, he was another old, white-haired man. I guess nobody figured that into the equation. And of course it was the stupid economy. Oops.

The esteemed scholar and cultural observer/philosopher Noam Chomsky has been quoted recently as saying (roughly) that America has one political party, but with two faces, one Democratic, and one Republican. But the one party is the party of big business. We have not been mindful of the warnings of Dwight Eisenhower, who said we should be on the lookout for the onset and control of the military industrial complex. Remember POGO? “We have met the enemy and he is us”? Welcome to the Halliburton.Exxon/Mobil/ Northrup Grumman United States of America. Our offices are on Wall Street and in the Green Zone . We will take your money, now, please.

Never mind, for a moment, at least, what our politicians and elected officials tell us about justice, equality and fairness: we are a country run mostly by greed, the accumulation of wealth by the few and selfishness. We have indeed turned a corner, but unless we embrace real change, and attempt to truly understand compromise and openness, we will hit a brick wall as we round that corner. And at the moment, we don’t have either enough seat belts or air bags to survive the crash. That is why the American people voted to put Obama in the driver’s seat and “hoped” to say good-bye to business as usual. .

It is time to put our money where our mouths are instead of in a Wall Street banker’s yacht, gird up our loins for some sacrifice and struggle, put our religious prejudices aside, along with our guns, our bigotry and our “bitterness” (boy, did we get suckered by that one) and face the fact that we all have work to do. And if it does not get done by all of us together, it will not get done at all. This is the second time we have had to throw out King George. We should make the most of it.

Please be optimistic. Just don’t be cavalier about it. There is too much at risk.