Scribblings of the Metropolitician

He Goes to Work!

Source: NYT

The New York Times reports "Obama Orders Secret Prisons and Detention Camps Closed" today in 3 executive orders. The man goes right to work -- and so I am reminded of the classic song with that very theme:

Obama also "gets paid to rock the nation" -- how apropos.

Platon -- Kickass Photographer and Someone You Wanna Know

We're in the midst of the photo book that we hope will rock the Korean photo and fashion scene to the core, and in keeping up with my favorite photographer, I came across this awesome audio interview he did for the Eddie Adams workshop.

Wait -- you don't know Platon? You kinda do, I think -- you just don't know you do.

And for the real fun? You wanna hear some hilarious narration behind the stories of many of his pictures? I encourage you to listen to the link to the audio while viewing his portraits from his site as he talks about them. Photographer or not, this will be one of the most entertaining and funny 30-minute stretches of time you'll ever spend in front of the computer.

Umm, besides when you first downloaded naked people through your computer for the first time back in 1995. Hehe.

Maya Angelou: "I Am an American, Baby!"

I've been getting flak for my posts, expressing for the first time in nearly a decade my bursting pride in being American since two days ago. People have been getting caught up in which invention I mentioned was or wasn't invented or developed or pioneered by an American, or my factual assertion that America is the oldest extant nation-state in the world.

But they miss the point -- the crucial point -- that I made. It's more than the things we've invented, which I do believe comes from a certain cultural dynamism and leveling of social barriers that constitutes a particularly American cocktail of hope and optimism; what accompanies the spectacular parade of things we've made is the social progress that absolutely cannot be denied: in a nation that set hoses on blacks 50 years ago, we now have elected a black president.

And the point isn't that there's a man with copious amounts of melanin in his skin occupying the powerful office of our land, but that he represents a huge broadening of the range of social possibility -- FOR EVERYONE. He is also a reminder of the hope that what is good about America can prevail over the cynicism of the former "right" and "left" alike. Some whites may have sworn there'd never be a "nigger elected president", but Tupac agreed with them in his song from not too long ago, ironically called "Changes."

I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace for races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...
let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause mo' black than white is smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other.
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.
And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh.

-- from "Changes" by Tupac

Remember that? Things HAVE changed. Ever since Obama got started, cynics have been deriding the power of symbols, the power of rhetoric, the very power to inspire -- all of which are the things that undergird change. It's the Hillary argument, which was soundly rejected: MLK was all bluster, because it took real policies to change America.

This isn't a chicken/egg thing -- for those who've actually studied the Civil Rights Movement, it's clear that there needed to be a firestorm of desire to change FIRST, that Brown v. Board of Ed needed people willing to fight from the city council on up BEFORE becoming a Supreme Court test case, that there needed to be an Emmett Till being murdered to both enrage and galvanize African-Americans months before Rosa Parks made the political move to refuse to give up her seat on the bus (or did you actually think she was the first person to refuse to do so, or that she wasn't a hardcore political activist and secretary for the local chapter of the NAACP?), and there needed to be an inspiration far deeper than mere self-interest to risk fire hoses, police dogs, beatings, and even death to get blacks merely registered to vote. It took murders of civil rights workers in 1963 to truly enrage the nation, but before that, the solemn and sacred commitment to do something that very well might result in you becoming a dead matyr.

That's the moral force that made possible the passage of a 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, when it was a political liability for Lyndon Johnson, and an issue southern states were yelling "secession!" over.

Symbols are powerful. Rhetoric has the power to move. And a person who has the power to move others en masse -- and not by tricky sophistry, appeal to hatred, or to base instincts, which is what makes the comparison of true moral inspiration to demagogues or even fascists so absolutely disingenuous and disgusting -- has what it takes to be a great leader. And that's what George W. Bush wasn't, and what McCain wasn't, and Hillary Clinton, with her scorched-earth tactics and 1990's thinking, wasn't. It's what Barack Obama is.

And that makes me proud to be an American again. But if your kneejerk response is that this is the same sort of jingoistic, hateful, arrogant pride that characterized the "red meat" patriots that stole the stage over the last several years -- whatever. You'll figure out that you're dead wrong, and maybe even get on board the bandwagon of moving past all that. I'm not presses -- you just haven't figured it out yet.

And that's OK. We'll wait.

But surely Maya Angelou is a better closer than me, and better speaker than me. She's Maya frickin' Angelou! Duh! I essentially expressed the same sentiment she did in my last few blog posts, but perhaps my way of doing so obfuscated the important point. So watch this little historical overview and interview with Dr. Angelou and take her at HER words, and not mine. 'Cause she's the master wordsmith, not me. But take her point: it's not the THINGS we're bragging about, but the IDEAS as well as the IDEALS.

"I am an American, baby!"

Oh, You Know I Have To...

These, collected at About.com.

"Annyunghaseyo" from Obama

Obama knows his Korean. Off the cuff, when taking the question of a kid who identified himself as Korean, Obama greets him in perfect Korean.

Being highly-educated and open-minded does count for something, eh? HT to here.

A Message from One American (Edited)

"A Message from One American"

One thing that has long frustrated me about being an American in Korea has been the way America, its history, and its people have been understood by most Korean people. For most Koreans I know, America is a place of extreme fantasy: either an imperialist nation characterized by discrimination and hypocrisy, or a perfect land of freedom and plenty. Of course, it's neither.

But on top of this fantasy vision of America, Koreans over the last 8 years have been essentially exposed to America at its very worst: unilateralism, closemindedness, and a general mean-spiritedness exemplified by our soon-to-be former president George W. Bush. In 2004, when he was re-elected, many of my Korean friends were aghast and couldn't understand how just over half of the American population voted for him. It was at this moment, I think, that Koreans most vividly realized that they really, really didn't understand America or Americans.

We are, essentially, a very conservative people. Most Koreans seem quite surprised to hear that, but those Koreans who have lived in America (and not as a partying exchange student) understand this. Essentially, we're a land in which public drunkenness at the office party is frowned upon, there is no such thing as a "room salon", and where the shorts skirts and high heels of many Korean women would draw stares. No matter our wilder media, real American life is in fact, pretty boring. Sex and the City is a fantasy; no one could ever have that much sex or buy the clothes they wear. No one on Friends could ever afford to live in those apartments with the jobs they had. And no, despite negative news stories, I've never been shot, seen anyone shot, nor do I own a gun. The wild west America Koreans see on TV largely does not exist.

It's obvious that most images of America have been formed by Hollywood fantasy or sensationalistic news stories that don't at all define the everyday life and thinking of Americans. In the same way, if all Americans knew of Korea was from the news and Korean movies and television, we'd think that Korea was a country full of Cinderella love triangles, black-suited gangsters, and that everyone lived in a 100-pyeong house.

Korean reality is very different, and is marked by an extreme pragmatism. In a Korean 20th century marked by colonial occupation, wars, extreme poverty, dictatorship, and a political culture that has not earned its own people's trust, a worldly pragmatism has been necessary to survive. I can totally understand that, since I am quite familiar with Korean history and have lived here half of my adult life. For a country that only gained anything close to real democracy about 15 years ago, it's understandable to see people who still distrust government, who don't have faith in institutions, who know that the "rule of law" is a very weak thing. .

But I come from a different political culture. For one, the United States has the oldest political and democratic institutions of any country that presently exists. Put more simply, the United States is the oldest country in the world. It may seem counterintuitive to a people constantly taught that Korean history is "5000 years" but in fact, it is not. When talking about the everyday life, the political institutions that control one's world, educational and social structures, Korea is quite young.

Which brings me to the real subject at hand -- Barack Obama and what this moment in history means to me, both as an American, as well as a member of the international community.

What I wish Koreans could really feel at this moment is what the election of Barack Obama means to many Americans. It's more than the fact that he's "the first black president" -- he's much, much more than that. In some conversations I've had here, I've realized that some Koreans think he got some special advantage because he's black, or that most black people voted for him for that reason. Absolutely wrong. There have been black candidates for president before, and the majority of black people did NOT vote for them. Regarding that office, it's the one place that even black people still believed that no black person could go, and it reminded everyone that, despite our reputation for being dreamers, America still had its limits.

Still, American culture is very much an idealistic one, in which children are told "you can do anything"; and many of us truly believe it, which is what explains why one of the youngest CULTURES in the world has invented nearly every modern object used by people across the world, from the steam engine to the car, airplane to the laser, microchip to nanobots. Sure, other countries perfect them and make them faster or smaller, but we INVENT them. Why? Because of our natural resources? Historical luck? It's more than that.

But it's also because ours was the culture that got rid of rigid social classes, hierarchies, and barriers. Yes, our nation was founded in slavery and the extermination of native peoples, but there is also a historical tendency towards greater freedom and equality, as our nation has outgrown its bloody past and repudiated old ways of thinking. In the space of the just over 150 years that passed since the early 1800's, when America became a maturing nation, the amount of economic, technological, and social progress in America has been astonishing. And this progress -- from the radio to the television to the computer to the Internet -- has affected everyone in the entire world.

Is this arrogant to say? I don't think so. It's merely a fact, and something that I can proudly point to as a proud aspect of my culture. But I'm not just talking about technology; I am also talking about another kind of progress: 50 years ago, black people could not even sit next to a white person in a public place, and now we have a black President of the United States.

Can you imagine what that means for Americans? All Americans? This is not just a triumph for blacks -- it's a reaffirmation of ALL AMERICANS' ability to have FAITH in our beliefs again, to dare to dream again. This is what Barack Obama called "the audacity of hope." He has given us that audacity again. Barack Obama only appeared on the national political scene 4 years ago, when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention about helping to end America's "political darkness." But it was more than that -- it was an ideological darkness, in which America had become a negative, divisive, even seemingly foreign place to live. He was a sudden ray of hope.

We've always been a nation of ideals, and we've spent our entire existence trying to achieve them -- that is one aspect of the greatness of America, even if there have been contradictions and challenges. America has always best been defined by what Obama yesterday called the "enduring power of our ideals" -- and not our temporary, transitory reality; at one time, our country had black people in chains, women could not vote, racist immigration laws stopped Chinese from immigrating to our country.

Yes, the realities of our history had oftentimes been harsh. So, for us, two days ago marked one of the most important points in our history -- when the original sin of our country's history seemed to be symbolically cancelled by a black man becoming president. This was the instant when some parents who had always lied to their children in saying "Yes, dear. You can do anything. You can even be President" no longer had to. It was no longer a lie. In a single instant, the range of what already-optimistic Americans thought we could do had broadened -- WE put a man on the moon, WE made a black man President of the United States.

So, I urge Koreans who want to understand what this means to an American like me to try to think about this not in terms of being a Korean. Yours is a totally different history than ours, and even when thinking about America, it's usually through a narrow and distorted lens, and usually only in terms of how American policy affects Korea, say as in the tank accident of 2002 or the American beef issue of this year.

America, if you really understand it, is more than a few bad GI's, English teachers you don't want dating your women, or the whipping boy for Korean society's frustration for an out-of-control private education/English industry -- or even the last 8 years of George W. Bush. America, as both a nation and an idea, is much broader and more complex than that. If there's one way I'd explain America, I'll do it in the words of our next President of the United States, which upon hearing, I began to cry. I have only cried twice in my life as an adult man -- at my father's funeral and during Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Here are the words that moved me so:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

This was the beginning. And when I heard this, it was when I knew the nightmare was over, that my kind of idealism and that it was now OK for an old-fashioned, very American way of thinking to come to the fore again:

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Those are the moments when many of the Americans you see crying on television broke down -- all at once, it was a repudiation of the previous 8 years, as well as an affirmation of the hope we still had for America. And that it was going to be possible, for many of us, to be proud to be American again.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I want to fly an American flag outside my window. Because it won't be a symbol of cynicism, or unilateral arrogance, of an expression of anger over 9/11, blind patriotism, or any of that. It can now be a symbol of hope, of inclusiveness and unity, and of the spirit of "Yes, we can." Suddenly, all the nice things that American is SUPPOSED to be, what we were taught in elementary school and perhaps snickered at in middle school -- it seems like it could actually come true.

People all over the world are proud of their cultures and nations. But many Americans have had to be embarrassed about and apolgetic of our country's actions for the last couple decades, especially the last one. Now, something has changed. It started with the symbol of our electing Obama. And under him, we have faith that we can build an America that not only Americans, but other countries around the world, can once again believe in.

As those of us who helped elect Obama chanted yesterday, "Yes, we can!" We believe it. And we hope that non-Americans around the world can believe with us, too.

Wooooooot!

From the Associated Press via Yahoo, and here's the key quote:

Obama captured it in his acceptance speech — this sense that despite holding America's feet to the fire, the rest of the world is rooting for it and wants it to lead and succeed.

"Our destiny is shared," he said, "and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

Overnight, Americans did something their harshest critics in Europe have yet to do: elect a person of color as head of state and commander in chief. That gives U.S. citizens some bragging rights, even if a lot of us would just as soon eschew hubris and embrace humility.

My sentiments, exactly. Yeah!

A Message from One American

This is going to go into OhMyNews as a column after being translated into Korean. Here's the raw text they'll be working with.

--------------

"A Message from One American"

One thing that has long frustrated me about being an American in Korea has been the way America, its history, and its people have been understood by most Korean people. For most Koreans I know, America is a place of extreme fantasy: either an imperialist nation characterized by discrimination and hypocrisy, or a perfect land of freedom and plenty. Of course, it's neither.

Sex and the City is a fantasy; no one could ever have that much sex or buy the clothes they wear. No one on Friends could ever afford to live in those apartments -- a masseuse, grad student, aspiring actor -- it's ludicrous. No, despite negative news stories, I've never been shot, seen anyone shot, nor do I own a gun. Most of the black people I know have jobs, wear normal clothes, and speak perfectly good English, despite the fantasy of black people that Korean kids in ridiculous hip hop clothes in Hongdae clubs have about us, or that keeps many mothers from wanting to have their kids taught by a black hagwon instructor.

It's obvious that most images of America have been formed by Hollywood fantasy or sensationalistic news stories that don't at all define the everyday life and thinking of Americans. In the same way, if all Americans knew of Korea was from the news and Korean movies and television, we'd think that Korea was a country full of heated love triangles involving Cinderella figures and chaebeol heirs, or that black-suited gangsters constantly got into fights using flying spinning back kicks. Everyone would live in a 100-pyeong house and drive expensive cars, live in Daechi-dong, and have "fashion designer" jobs in which they never seem to do any real work.

But on top of this fantasy vision of America, Koreans over the last 8 years have been essentially exposed to America at its very worst: unilateralism, closemindedness, and a general mean-spiritedness exemplified by our soon-to-be former president George W. Bush. In 2004, when he was re-elected, many of my Korean friends were aghast and couldn't understand how just over half of the American population voted for him. It was at this moment, I think, that Koreans most vividly realized that they really, really didn't understand America or Americans.

We are, essentially, a very conservative people. Most Koreans seem quite surprised to hear that, but those Koreans who have lived in America (and not as a partying exchange student) understand this. Essentially, we're a land in which public drunkenness at the office party is frowned upon, there is no such thing as a "room salon", and where the shorts skirts and high heels of many Korean women would draw stares. In the so-called "Bible belt," most people would describe themselves as moderate to deep Christians, but most do not make much of a point to go convert people on the streets, go to heavily politicalized megachurches, or constantly make their friends and colleagues uncomfortable by asking them, "Are you a Christian?" No matter our wilder media, real American life is in fact, pretty boring. We tend to have wider streets and bigger houses than in Korea, have endless shopping malls that look like Coex, and don't necessarily like how commercialized our lives have become. We're a country that invented the concept of "home theater" because we don't like to go out much, party at home, and its become cheaper and easier than going to a real movie. In Korea, such items get transformed into "luxury" items; even there, Koreans and Americans have totally different ways of looking at things.

And that different view on the world is understandable. One thing that has struck me about many Koreans' way of looking at things has been the extremely realistic view of the way things work here that many people seem to have; in a Korean 20th century marked by colonial occupation, wars, extreme poverty, dictatorship, and a political culture that has not earned its own people's trust, a worldly pragmatism has been necessary to survive. I can totally understand that, since I am quite familiar with Korean history and have lived here half of my adult life. For a country that only gained anything that can be called real democracy about 15 years ago, it's understandable to see people who still distrust government, who don't have faith in institutions, who know that the "rule of law" sometimes is worth no more than the paper it's written on.

But I come from a different political culture. For one, the United States has the oldest political and democratic culture of any country that presently exists. Put more simply, the United States is the oldest country in the world. It may seem counterintuitive to a people constantly taught that Korean history is "5000 years" but in fact, it is not. When talking about the everyday life, the political institutions that control one's world, educational and social structures, Korea is quite young. Anyone who comes from a country with the oldest political institutions to one of the world's youngest can see this. In almost every aspect of daily life, this is patently obvious.

Which brings me to the real subject at hand -- Barack Obama and what this moment in history means to me, both as an American, as well as a member of the international community.

What I wish Koreans could really feel at this moment is what the election of Barack Obama means to many Americans. It's more than the fact that he's "the first black president" -- he's much, much more than that. In some conversations I've had, I've realized that some Koreans think he got some special break because he's black, or that most black people voted for him for that reason. Absolutely wrong. There have been black candidates for president before, and the majority of black people did NOT vote for them. Regarding that office, it's the one place that even black people truly believed no black person could go, and it reminded everyone that America's reality had a long way to go towards its ideals.

Yet, what Koreans should know is that American culture is very much an idealistic "you can do anything" kind of culture; one must ask themselves what is so dynamic about American culture such that one of the youngest CULTURES in the world has invented nearly every modern object used by people across the world, from the steam engine to the car, airplane to the laser, microchip to nanobots. Sure, other countries perfect them and make them faster or smaller, but we INVENT them. Why? Because of our natural resources? Historical luck? Sure, that's a part of the story.

But it's also because ours was the culture that got rid of rigid social classes, hierarchies, and barriers. Yes, our nation was founded in slavery and the extermination of native peoples, but there is also a historical tendency towards greater freedom and equality, as our nation has outgrown its bloody past and repudiated old ways of thinking. One thing that makes me proud as an American is that we do NOT have a 5000-year history in which things didn't remain essentially static and separate from the rest of the world. In the space of the just over 150 years that passed since the early 1800's, when America became a maturing nation, the amount of economic, technological, and social progress in America has been astonishing. And this progress -- from the radio to the telephone to the television to the computer to the Internet -- has affected everyone in the entire world.

Is this arrogant to say? I don't think so. It's merely a fact, and something that I can proudly point to in my culture. But more than things, what I am most prideful of in my culture is the OTHER kind of progress: we are a culture in which black men used to be hung from trees for even LOOKING at a white person in a way they didn't like just 50 years ago to becoming President of the United States.

Can you imagine what that means for Americans? All Americans? It's not just the black thing -- it's a reaffirmation of our ability to have FAITH in our "Yes, we can!" culture again. Barack Obama only appeared on the national political scene 4 years ago, when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention about helping to end America's "political darkness." He articulated what many Americans were thinking. But it was more than that -- it was an ideological darkness, in which America had become a negative, divisive, even seemingly foreign place to live. Where was the optimism, the positivity, the "can do" spirit? It had been replaced by fear and loathing, distrust and negativity. He was a sudden ray of hope.

Yet, even when Obama was starting the election course last winter at the Iowa caucus, many (including myself) still doubted how far he could go. We WANTED him to go far, but wasn't he perhaps being a bit unrealistic? But then he won the state against Hilary Clinton. He WON! Suddenly, a new level had been reached -- an almost completely WHITE state had gone for Obama. And the further he went, the more our hopes started to rise with him. And when he won the Democratic candidacy, many people were both shocked and elated.

But we still doubted, deep inside. Could he beat an old white man for president? And with conservative and charming (well, back then) Palin -- perhaps this was as far as he could go? And a man with the middle name "Hussein?" And perhaps -- even as with as far as he had come -- perhaps many white people would, behind the privacy of the secret ballot simply choose McCain. Perhaps even on election day this so-called "Bradley effect" (of a white person saying to a pollster they would vote for the black candidate publicly because it sounded good, but privately be unable to do so) would take effect?

And then...he...WON. That is the moment that 80% American optimism became 100%, that the memory of the past 8 years suddenly seemed like a terrible nightmare we were about to awaken from, that America seemed to be fulfilling fully on its ideals.

We've always been a nation of ideals, and we've spent our entire existence trying to achieve them -- that is one aspect of the greatness of America, even if there have been contradictions and challenges. America has always best been defined by what Obama yesterday called the "enduring power of our ideals" -- and not the temporary and transitory reality that at one time had black people in chains, in which women could not at one time vote, that once passed laws to stop Chinese from immigrating to our country.

Yes, we've had bad times. The realities of our history had oftentimes been harsh. But this was one of the most important points in our history -- when the original sin of our country's history seemed to be symbolically cancelled by a black man becoming president. This was the instant when parents who had always lied to their children in saying "Yes, dear. You can do anything. You can even be President" no longer had to. It had magically become no longer a white lie. In a single instant, WE and Obama had broadened the range of what already-optimistic Americans thought we could do -- WE put a man on the moon, WE made a black man President of the United States. It's funny that the former happened first. Because in American reality, it was more realistic to send Apollo 11 to the moon and back in 1969 than even offer a black person basic political rights. And now, here we were.

So, I urge Koreans who want to understand what this means to an American like me to try to think about this not in terms of being a Korean. Yours is a totally different history than ours, and even when thinking about America, it's usually through a narrow and distorted lens, and only in terms of American policy as it affects Korea, say as in the tank accident of 2002 or the American beef issue of this year.

America, if you really understand it, is more than a few bad GI's, English teachers you don't want dating your women, or the symbol of your frustration at an out-of-control private education/English industry, or even the last 8 years of George W. Bush. America, as both a nation and an idea, is much broader and more complex than that. If there's one way I'd explain America, I'll do it in the words of our next President of the United States, which upon hearing, I began to cry. I have only cried twice in my life as an adult man -- at my father's funeral and yesterday, during Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Here are the words that moved me so:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

This was the beginning. And when I heard this, it was when I knew the nightmare was over, that my kind of idealism and that it was now OK for an old-fashioned, very American way of thinking to come to the fore again:

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Those are the moments when many of the Americans you see crying on television broke down -- all at once, it was a repudiation of the previous 8 years, as well as an affirmation of the hope we still had for America. And that it was going to be possible, for many of us, to be proud to be American again.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I want to fly an American flag outside my window. Because it won't be a symbol of cynicism, or unilateral arrogance, of an expression of anger over 9/11, blind patriotism, or any of that. It can now be a symbol of hope, of inclusiveness and unity, and of the spirit of "Yes, we can." Suddenly, all the nice things that American is SUPPOSED to be, what we were taught in elementary school and perhaps snickered at in middle school -- it seems like it could actually come true.

People all over the world are proud of their cultures and nations. But many Americans have had to be embarrassed about and apolgetic of our country's actions for the last couple decades, especially the last one. Now, something has changed. It started with the symbol of our electing Obama. And under him, we have faith that we can build an America that not only Americans, but other countries around the world, can once again believe in.

As those of us who helped elect Obama chanted yesterday, "Yes, we can!" We believe it. And we hope that non-Americans around the world can believe with us, too.

"The Enduring Power of Our Ideals"

(HT from the Marmot) ExpatJane! OhMyNews got you!

Source: OhMyNews,com

오바마의 당선 수락연설을 지켜보던 한 참가자가 감격에 겨워 눈물을 흘리고 있다.

"One of the attendees come to watch the acceptance speech is overcome with deep emotion as tears stream down her face."

I, being a pretty private person and a guy who was raised on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and a good measure of constrained male gender roles, slid into the back of the crowd when I saw the speech playing. I broke down behind the bar, and was a blubbering mess for about a minute, then did the "man" thing and acted all calm and cool, like I had just gotten something in my eye. Umm, both of them. At the same time. Ahem.

And there were video cameras there, too, so I made myself scarce. I'm a man, dammit!

I must say that I didn't want to go to the Dems Abroad thing because I was watching the same MSNBC feed from home (which rocked, by the way!) and I feared getting emotional about something like this, because I knew it had the potential. I'm very liberal, I'm black, I'm an Obama supporter, and the basis of doesn't lie in either of those first two categories; I really feel that Obama stands for a whole lotta different kinds of change.

But I'm also a guy, and a photographer, and I didn't want to be the guy in the picture. Because that's the picture *I* would have been on the lookout for. It felt like I was setting myself up to be the cliched shot if I went, and I knew that the Korean media was converging on the Orange Tree for their "foreigner Obama reaction" shots.

But there's another but: I felt the desire to be with other cheering supporters stronger than the embarrassment I would feel if I got all blubbery. And after the reality started sinking in after Obama won Ohio, President Barack Obama had become a reality. So I made my way down to Haebangchon and caught just the acceptance speech.

I started getting weak at this point:

"In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too."

Tearing up. Crap. Lip quivering. Dammit. Kryptonite...weakening... me. Must...get to...safety...

The speech was working me not just because it outlined a vision of BEING American that was nothing but a barely-remembered dream during an administration marked by meanspiritedness, divisiveness, and sometimes even hate (look at the embarrassing examples of humanity that surfaced in the McCain and Palin rallies) -- and it was clear that MY people were assuming center stage now.

It was like being liberated -- not with troops and tanks rolling through some city square, but with return to what's truly great about America: being dreamers, a people who lived according to our ideals, who don't believe in unjust wars, vilifying entire races (Obama's an Arab!) or religions (Obama's a Muslim!) and forgetting the principles (umm, 1st and 4th Amendments, anyone?) that define our people.

It's the vision that I laid down in a heartfelt blog post back in 2005, when we were still in the heart of our American darkness: "America, the Theoretically Beautiful, as Written by a True 'Conservative.'"

They weren't just words to me, because I'm a scholar and teacher of American history, because I knew exactly the kind of American I wanted but hadn't seen for most of my adult life, and because Obama -- from his very existence and the possibility of him becoming President of the United States to his policies and the other things I agree with him on -- was like this mystical golden child.

Except that this movie wasn't starring Eddie Murphy. And it wasn't a movie.

It was getting pretty real. And Obama had used one of my favorite Lincoln quotes (also used in X-Men 2, by the way, for those paying attention) to boot. Not here's where I, for some reason, became a blubbering mess and hid behind the bar:

"To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope."

I don't know where YOU lost composure, if you did, but that was it for me. America IS a country that is defined by nothing other than "the enduring power of our ideals" and I felt the re-connection at that moment with an America that had been marginalized and forgotten, or when brought out and brushed off in unguarded moments, was laughed off or mocked as "naive" or weakness or just "liberal fantasy."

No! Torture is wrong. "Rendition" (i.e. secret arrests and kidnapping) is wrong. The executive branch using the 4th Amendment as toilet tissue is wrong. Vilifying "A-rabs" or attacking a candidate for being a Muslim is wrong (correct answer: "So what if Obama WAS Muslim" -- thank you Colin Powell, for having the brass to point that out to those who didn't get it). Basing patriotism on whom we want to intimidate, silence, or arrest is wrong. Basing that same patriotism on whom we want to bomb is wrong.

This was not the America I had come to know through my experience with the good people I grew up with in Ohio, or through my own studies of US history in college, or through even deeper research in my graduate work.

The US invented democracy -- sorry, Canadian guy in the bar who was yelling and gesticulating that it was the French. That's what grade school textbooks say, or old World Book encyclopedias, but a closer look at history proves otherwise. The American Revolution started in 1775 in terms of the shooting war, and was essentially an incident that snowballed. But the ideological momentum behind that, which resulted in a Declaration of Independence in 1776, was of a real political and SOCIAL revolution. The ancien regime was no more; people stopped taking off their hats and bowing to "their betters"; black slaves echoed the cry of "freedom from slavery to England" and really began dreaming of a reality of equality -- and as the moral rectitude of the Quakers grew into a real abolitionist movement in the 1830's, and into a near firestorm by the 1850's, before John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 became a harbinger for the Civil War -- the ideals from that founding document of a true, class-and-status-demolishing democracy were in full play.

The French had been enamored of Benjamin Franklin when he came to France to enlist the support of that country in the American revolutionary struggle, and it was his everyman demeanor, even his beaverskin hat, that became all the rage with French high society. Things American became quite popular, and the jettisoning of social classes was thought of as quaintly refreshing all across Europe. When the French Revolution had come and gone and former royalty were being similarly jettisoned from society, along with many of their heads, one direct inspiration was the Americans having fought long and hard to do so from 1775. By the time 1789 came along, the American Constitution had been inked and signed for 2 years -- and the relatively egalitarian previous Articles of Confederation and various state constitutions were already working within the rubric of real, working democracy.

And the march of revolutions didn't end there: the Haitian revolution succeeded under Toussaint L'Overture , which took the French's main base away from them, which is why they lost the ability to effectively manage their trade in the middle of America in 1797, and which is why they sold the "Lousiana Purchase" to the US for a pauper's price in 1801 (land claims transferred in 1803). Even the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Ho Cho Min's consitution (and pretty much every "democratic" constitution in the modern era) owes a huge debt to the original democratic constitution of the US. And ours got done without heads being chopped off.

Cynics point out the contradiction of slavery, or that women weren't included in the language of that founding document, or that Indians were removed and murdered, etc.

Well, yeah. America's hands have always had the stink of blood and moral turpitude on them. Who is arguing that? But as much as any other aspect of our original sins, also written into America's DNA is the fact that the idea of inherent, essential equality was created by that document, by the "revolutionary republicanism" of the moment that produced it, and the overall culture of egalitarianism that resulted from it -- which led to people demanding the rights that they felt were promised ALL human beings, guaranteed by the "inalienable rights" of the Creator (no, this doesn't mean they were Christians, but it was just a way of saying that no other human could deprive you of them), to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Civil War ain't called "the last battle of the American Revolution" by many historians for nothing.

And the march of our ideals goes on, even as African-American rights were denied after Reconstruction collapsed in 1877, but women gained the right to vote, blacks eventually gained the ability to go to the same schools as whites, and now, gays are asking for the same rights as straight folk.

Our ideals will never be matched by reality. But the bitterness, cynicism, divisiveness, and hatred that has characterized our country killed the desire to even fucking TRY. To remember what America stands for -- and it's not Guantanamo Bay and other secret prisons and torture chambers around the world, defending the option to torture people, being an international bully, or eroding the sacred rights of our own citizens to criticize the government, speak "truth to power", and be free from unconstitutional monitoring, search-and-seizure, or arrest.

Aren't those guarantees what we fought against English to secure? Aren't the liberties we bragged about during the Cold War the rationale we used when pointing out how unfree the Soviet Union or China were, with secret police, prisons, torture, and government bullying or control of the press? And then we had Abu Graib -- Saddam Hussein's former chamber of horrors -- as well as the CIA having been revealed to be using "rendition" to whisk off people to waterboard and worse in former KGB gulags across Eastern Europe?

What certain people didn't get was that those complaints weren't about being PARTISAN. It was a about fighting a battle for against things that are UN-AMERICAN. And I don't care WHICH side of the fence you stand on -- secret prisons, arrest without due process, and torture are UN-AMERICAN. As are vilifying people who POINT THAT OUT.

As Obama spoke his words, I knew the nightmare was over. Is over. The end credits for the former way of doing things are rolling.

And to those who are still backbiting and jabbing at Obama's win -- it's over. McCain lost. He conceded, and he did so gracefully. It was a fair fight, and the people have overwhelming spoken -- it was a fair fight but not a close one. Now it's time to get on board, roll our sleeves up, and fix this country. Because for the Republicans had their chance, and they had it for 8 years. The people wanted a change, and it's DONE.

That's why I cried. Both Obama's existence as president and the words he spoke are behind that. In a way, it was like the tanks and troops of liberating army symbolizing that a dark time has ended, that a new day had come, and that this was a true revolution in thinking about what it MEANS to be American. So, yeah, I blubbered like a baby there before I got myself together.

And it wasn't a cliche, even though it might feel like one to a jaded photographer, a cynic from the other side, or somebody who's "just not a hugger." We weren't crying for just "our side" or blue states, or for bleeding heart liberals alone. It was for our idea of country, of a country that doesn't HAVE to talk about sides, that doesn't HAVE to talk about the colors of state, just like suddenly, for an American president, the color of one's skin doesn't matter, either. Or the fact that one's first name is "Obama" or the middle name "Hussein." That's the kind of country I've always wanted -- and now, we have a chance to get it.

So cynics can point out that things are going to be tough for Obama, that he has had a lot of expectations placed upon him, that he might not deliver.

Duh? Yeah, we know. But the point of "hope" is that you believe, anyway. That's the point. Like "faith" entails a belief in a God one cannot see, or that "trust" requires belief in someone who could very well betray you. That's HOW IT WORKS.

So, like all Americans, it's time to hope Obama walks the walk as good as he talked the talk. Don't we ALL hope for that? Here's hoping that the next 4 years will be better than the previous ones, and that Obama's indisputable ability to inspire can enable and define the kind of effective leadership that this country sorely needs.

God bless President Barack Obama and God bless the United States of America!

Woooot!

The Best Campaign Ad Ever

For me, at any rate. Thanks, ExpatJane. I'm pretty much just biting your post, although writing my own connection with it. You da bomb.

For those of you who don't know the campaign, here's the original. If memory serves, this was originally just a joke amongst a bunch of friends that one of them filmed and the idea got pitched for a real commercial. Then it became the stuff of legend.

And the new version. Of course it's just coinicidence, but the main character is noticeably more gaunt than years ago. I'm sure it's just cooincidence, but it just adds something extra to the idea that all hasn't been going well, and you see them packing up their apartment.

The new America is such a stark contrast with the old one, which a lot of us remember along with this commercial, when we were a lot more innocent, self-assured, and things just felt better. That direct comparison really hits home as we revisit each character; but when we get to the punchline and the TV shot, this time it's revealed what is being watched -- and it's the only moment things are looking up. Another significant departure from the original is that instead of distracted and casual detachment (which was the cool part of the friendship we were being exposed to), the main character's face actually lights up at the moment of the reveal -- and we see that Obama is what's up.

Very effective, and strangely touching. Especially coming from several black men, whether or not the viewer IS black; the race of the members is never explicitly referenced, but their entire mode of interaction is, obviously, unmistakably black. That's why it works -- and not just for black people. It makes a certain type of desirable black malehood instantly accessible. You see stylized versions of black malehood commodified and consumed all the time -- from rap stylings to entire modes of behavior -- but this version is much more mundane, normalized, and endearing. And I think that's why this commercial became so popular in the first place. And for me, I liked the popularization of this particular black "mode" because it showed black people being black, but being completely NORMAL. You didn't see much of that even back in 2000. And we've come a long way since then to Obama.

That being said, revisiting these same guys and seeing them being normal, black, but now experiencing the same pain that we're going through really works at one level. On another more subtle one, perhaps felt by black folks more directly because these are issues that impact folks more disproportionately, from economic crunches to having the Army be an attractive financial option to Hurricane Katrina -- all of which were portrayed in the vid, once again, the video works on levels and deeper levels.

Smart, smart video, guys, and great job.