If you read this blog regularly, you might have guessed that I’m a pretty cynical person.
The cynical side of me says Bush should have lost both the 2000 and 2004 elections, that in those cases Florida and Ohio, respectively, were stolen, so why should this election be any different? It the wee hours of the last presidential election, it looked like Kerry would take Ohio, and with it, end Bush II’s ugly reign. But then we were told that no, the exit polls were wrong, there might have been some miscounting, but Bush definitely, maybe won. Yeah, make that definitely. He won. In the wake of today’s historic election, it’s hard to remember that the stakes were very high the last time around too - Iraq was growing increasingly unpopular, the media still reported the carnage back then, we were vaguely aware that something very sickening was happening and that it might one day turn right back and bite us in the behind, probably in the form of increased terrorism and instability in the world. The Kyoto Protocol was relegated to the same status as toilet paper, civil liberties became a privilege you earned by conforming, not a right you were supposed to have been born with as an American citizen.
We lived in a very scary world four years ago, thought it only seems scarier now because many of us are losing our jobs and our homes, and those of us who haven’t yet feel like dead women and men walking. How long before the Grim Reaper of Layoffs and “rightsourcing” comes for us?
But here’s the thing about 2008 - in many ways we are much better off now than we were then.
First of all, enough of us now believe that climate change is real, and that it is man-made, that Sarah Palin could not bring herself to say outright in the vice presidential debates that she thinks global warming is just another sign of the End of Days. That’s major progress.
Second, what so many of us feared (and what Bush & co. exploited to no end over the last 7 years) did not come to pass - another terrorist attack. Terorrist attacks hit societies in two waves - the first punch comes on impact, shattering lives, communities, and that fragile perception of security so essential to a functioning democracy.
And then they come back again for a second swing, this time at common sense, and for some people, decency. How might America have reacted to a man with the middle name of “Hussein” had there been another attack, even though discriminating agaist Obama for that reason is akin to gathering anyone with either “Timothy” or “McVeigh” in their name in room and torching it? We have been very lucky to have been spared from finding out.
Although not much of a consolation at this point, the case Naomi Klein laid out in 2007 in her brilliant exposé, The Shock Doctrine against market capitalism has been proven in brilliant, gruesome glory, and on a gigantic scale that is rocking the entire world. (If you haven’t read this - please go out and buy it or borrow it from the library - it’s available in paperback… democracy does indeed depend on people knowing how governments manipulate them so they can guard against it.) Will this mean the end of the brutal brand of “Me First” Capitalism that’s become popular the world over, not just in American (see recent French and Canadian elections)?
Probably not. Depending on how prolonged this recession is, it might take people a couple of years to a couple of decades, but eventually they will get caught up in making easy money all over again, and resist all pleas anyone makes that unbridled greed brings us all down, sooner or later. But at least for now, no matter who wins, we have a shot at an egalitarian society once again.
Finally, this time around we do not have a poser, puppet president going against a decorated Vietnam veteran - and winning because he talks like “regular folk” even though he was born with a silver spoon twice the size of Kerry’s up his behind. That was the most insulting thing to me about the 2004 election - and should be the greatest source of shame for anyone who claims to ”support the troops”. In 2004 it came to pass that one such soldier’s service was trumped and dishonored by a man who through family connections found a way to evade those very same responsibilities he inflicted on the young generation he was entrusted with when he became president. This should not be forgotten. Whatever happens in 2008, no matter how much we disliked McCain’s campaigning tactics, he did serve his country and survived torture while George W. Bush was partying it up in Texas. And that also, is progress.
But here’s where things get personal for me. As Palestinians who have to listen to desperate McCain aides try to disprove Obama’s commitment to Israel because he also happens to acknowlege that Palestinians exist for the sake of a few Florida votes, my parents don’t really care much who wins. As far as they’re concerned, Arabs are not just second-class citizens in North America, but more like third or fourth class. In a campaign where the biggest smear against Obama is the attempt to paint him as a Muslim, this perception isn’t paranoia - it’s simply pointing to the elephant of legitimate racism in the room. It is legitimate in the United States of 2008 to paint Muslims as lesser Americans, who should not be considered for higher office. While there were a few lone voices out there that dared ask the nation: how does a Muslim-American listen to these swipes taken at Obama and not take them personally, most in the media responded with ”how dare you suggest Obama is a Muslim” when the correct answer should have been: “actually, he happens not to be Muslim, but why are you asking? Is there something wrong with being Muslim?”
It took Colin Powell to make that point, finally, and to try and get it across to Americans through the image of a Muslim kid who bled and died for America - making it seem to the rest of us that only by bleeding can we prove our worth to this society.
But for all my parents’ disbelief, for my own cynicism, for a society steeped in racism, scared and confused by the paradox of being a nation that aspires both to lmperialism and lofty ideals of equality and social justice, for an old woman who could best articulate her fears of the “other” by calling Obama and Arab and McCain’s retort that Obama is not Arab but “decent”, this remains a historic day.
It is the day that Americans have the chance to not just talk the talk of a society they claim gives equal rights to everyone, a meritocracy blind to race, religion, gender or blue-blooded birth, but also to walk the walk and elect the first half-black American president in history who came from humble origins and made something meaningful of himself.
Obama is the public face of every child of immigrants who, in spite of staggering odds, in spite of entrenched racism and a skewed social landscape, works twice as hard to achieve half as much - and still makes it.
No matter what happens today, I will always remember that a guy with the middle name “Hussein” was in the runnign for president in 2008. And that is something that ought to soften the heart of the staunchest cynic.
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