I’m still in awe of the speech of our next President, and I am finally proud of one of this country’s leaders. Barack Obama is an amazing man, a prolific speaker, and a true American. He is a man of the people, not some of the people – the people who look like him, but all of the people.
Listening to him speak made me wonder, once again, how in the world Dub was “elected” the president of anything other than a homecoming planning committee. I’m still mystified by the blatant disregard for the facts and the state of the country that, 4 years ago, led folks to say, “Sure, things in this country have gotten worse for MOST Americans under his leadership — healthcare, jobs in this country, the economy, the role of America in the world, and have mercy the war on terrorism in Iraq even though Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan, but he’s against abortion and same sex marriage and he says he’s a Christian, so I’ll vote him in,” or whatever it was they told themselves to justify choosing mediocrity and driving our country further into despair. Someone once told me that she voted for him because she thought he was a good person. I’m not inclined to agree with that “thinking”, but even if he is a good person, who cares? That’s not the job of the commander in chief. His or her job is to lead this country, and to do what’s best for the majority of the people — not his rich friends.
Actively participating in the political process is something my parents instilled in me. I’ve been watching the conventions since I was in high school. I still remember sitting on my parents’ bed and watching Jesse Jackson speak at the DNC in 1988 while I was on the phone with the guy I was digging at the time. I’ve worked on several presidential campaigns, and I try to keep myself tuned in to what the elected officials are and are not doing. As an educated Black female firmly entrenched in the middle class, I take pride in paying acute attention to my country’s leaders and the experiences of my fellow Americans. It’s painful to see that more and more elected officials choose to give in to their wealthy counterparts to the detriment of their constituency. I still believe, though, that there are good politicians in our country, who want better, who want more for this amazing nation than what we have right now. And finally I see one on the biggest stage pleading the case for ALL Americans.
I wish that I could go through his entire speech and pull out the points that moved me and touched me, but the truth is, it all touched me. He spoke frankly and earnestly, and I was so proud to be an American like him. His tone was not condescending or flippant, and it’s clear that he is in touch with the people he wants to represent and lead… that’s all of us… He wasn’t unkind to his opponent, but he spoke the truth and not the propaganda that his opponent spews about him. And while I don’t think that everything that Obama hopes to accomplish can be in the short 8 years of his impending presidency, it was refreshing to hear him actually express an interest in restoring some dignity and growth to this country. The principles upheld by my country’s prez for the past 8 years are shameful and dangerous and embarrassing, and we can’t survive if we keep doing the same ole, good ole boy, things. It’s time for a change, and just Obama’s desire for change is the difference between night and day.
We have already had 8 horrible years of night… isn’t it time for some day?
August 30, 2008 at 11:35 am
I wish I were with you on this. Like most people of our generation, I would much rather have in the White House someone who sounds and looks and handles himself like Obama does than like the other guy does — whether by ‘other guy’ we mean the last guy or the opponent. It’s impossible not to admire Obama as a man or to be grateful for much of what his political ascendancy in the last few years means for this country and for its part in the world at this point in modern history.
(It’s true, by the way, that I’m not as ready as you are to condemn either Bush or McCain for being the kind of politicians they are — like them or not. That’s not to praise either of them much; it’s really to affirm the worth of the imperfect but, even so, historically remarkable political order that they — and Obama — have in their varying ways succeeded and been tested in. But that’s beside my point here.)
The abortion issue remains a most vital sticking point for me. I know you know I don’t say that as a knee-jerk reaction, or because the Republicans have pulled any wool over my eyes. (I do vote most seasons, but I’ve never been a registered anything, politically.) I am grateful for Obama, I like him — and like you I’m proud of the country, that it could make it to this place, to see Barack & Michelle Obama standing there today in spite of all the horror of this country’s in many ways bluntly Godless history. But free & open abortion is a horror equal to any that’s come before. And it’s an impossible price for me to say ‘Well, okay, it’s a necessary political trade-off’ to, in exchange for the relief of feeling that other horrors may now be fully past. I wish the choices were otherwise.
(I discuss the abortion question very briefly with another Obama-supporting friend here.)
August 30, 2008 at 3:23 pm
@paul:
Ah, the abortion issue. I don’t think most people would say that they are for abortion. The abortion issue is one bantered about to manipulate the emotions on “both” sides. I am just as offended by abortion as I am by the thousands of men and women sent to die in a purposeless war, or the thousands of Iraqi children (and adults, btw) forced to be casualties of one man’s revenge on behalf of his father, or the hundreds of thousands of American children suffering malnutrition and mediocre education (a fact that lowers the quality of life and in some cases life at all for them) due to the blind eye of the current regime, or the untold numbers of displaced and abandoned victims of Katrina. No one has ever been able to explain to me why the lives of the unborn Americans are more valuable than those of the living, breathing children all over this country and the world. It seems it might be more helpful for the government to present realistic alternatives to abortion than to condemn those, Republican, Democrats, Christian and other who have opted, however unfortunately, for that choice.
And if memory serves me correctly, it was God that first gave us choice, in all things, knowing that we would fail in some cases to make the right choice.
I wish that in my country, folks would champion the right to “life”, in all that notion entails, for more than just the unborn American. I wish that equal rights, life sustaining employment opportunities, safe and thoughtful education on equal levels for all people, and affordable healthcare for all people were of any interest to the prolife/Republic/or Christian right, to the point where they made the choice to stand up and do something. I guess, though, that in matters other than abortion, people/Christians are very much pro choice.
I’m not, by the way, a fan or proponent of abortion. I know the horrors of abortion better than most debating and discussing the issue. I also know that like most horrors, it exists because the manifestation of the love of Christ isn’t apparent to those who consider or choose abortion. Even though God’s love is always “out there”, He calls on those who follow Him to show His love so that lives and thought processes can be and will be changed. This issue is a matter of love, plain and simple.
August 30, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It’s a hard issue and not one I like to bring up, though I’m convinced of its importance. I hate the fact that it’s been, and probably will be all my life, the line of social division that it is in this country. I’m sorry that it’s been used by the parties as it has, and very sorry that one of the effects of that fact now is that I’m unable to support what’s in so many respects the most exciting political candidacy of our time. I wish it were otherwise.
I don’t think of you as a proponent of abortion, of course. I hope that’s not what I seemed to be saying earlier.
For me, the issue simply can’t be listed with other unfortunate social dysfunctions or forms of injustice, nor even with other forms of taking innocent life — though it is all of these. It’s something that goes in a unique way, among questions of our time, to the heart of who and what we understand humankind to be. To miss on this one is to undercut, finally, everything else we seek to achieve in the hope for a society that truly seeks the good of its own and of its neighbors. That’s a difficult argument to make well, and I don’t propose to try here. But I think that’s the real magnitude of the problem. In my judgment, the abortion problem is much more than just another means for opposing political forces to provoke people to decisions otherwise contrary to their own interests — though it has been that to a degree that’s painful to observe.
August 30, 2008 at 6:26 pm
@paul:
“It’s something that goes in a unique way [...] to the heart of who and what we understand humankind to be.”
It is this “unique way” that I clearly do not understand.
Btw, I know you don’t think I’m a proponent of abortion, love. Just wanted to make it clear that I am opposed to the act of abortion despite the fact that I don’t think it’s the most important issue, or the only issue, worth the attention of voters, Americans, people, etc.