Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Hail to da Chief!

I'm gonna be very happy in the next 24 hours, as I get ready for the inauguration of the first black POTUS, a.k.a. the grandaddy-est HNIC the world has hitherto-fore seen.

Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a Ludacris song:

"We all in together now, birds of a feather now, jus' bought a plane so we changin' the weather now!"

Woop-woop!

"I Didn't Vote for Obama Because I Am Black"

OhMyNews translated and printed that article I wrote here just a few posts ago, although the title was changed: "I Didn't Vote for Obama Just Because I'm Black." Interesting. The overall reaction in the comments section was quite good. There was a comment or three about how the US was still responsible for splitting the peninsula, how the US had hurt Korea, but surprisingly little criticism along the lines of the historical hair-splitting that marked the non-Korean reaction to the original English version of that post. Interestingly, any negative reactions on the Korean side mostly had to do with America's role in Korean history.

Most comments, however, were expressions of agreement with the sentiments contained therein, as well as a significant amount of envy for the president we are about to have. I think that a lot of that comes from not only the dissatisfaction with the present president Lee Myung Bak, but the signficant letdown he is compared to the extreme optimism that came with Noh Moo Hyun. Many people I know personally expressed that they had cried in relief and disbelief when he was elected, and the world came to see Korea's democracy as one that worked. 5 years later, and public faith in him had nearly vanished.

Deja vu? A bit. But I think, quite frankly, Obama is far more prepared and intelligent than Noh was, and most importantly, politically savvy. No matter what you think of him, one must admit that his campaign set a new standard for planning, organization, and implementation. And having bested first Hillary and then McCain, and not by playing the traditional political game, but by changing the very rules themselves, I think he's DONE a lot more than people give him credit for. Not saying that this guarantees anything, but if he runs the country like he ran his campaign, that's pretty darn encouraging.

Ain't Nothing Changed

I wrote this in 2005, back in the midst of the "political darkness" that was George Bush's regime. If you read it, you'll see that there ain't NOTHING new in what I've been saying over the last two days -- I'm just elated that MY definition of patriotism and pride in America has become acceptable again, and isn't the jarhead jingoism that not only led to continued mistakes in our foreign policy, but erosion of our basic liberties and the foundation of our happiness at home.

From a post I wrote, entitled "America, the Theoretically Beautiful, as Written by a True 'Conservative.'" My notion of being American hasn't changed one iota, it isn't something I just whipped up two days ago:

"My allegiance lies with protecting the lofty ideals of America and the governmental structures that made our national and political culture unique in the history of the world – and which also inspired countless governments that came after it with its lofty example. It is not hyperbole or jingoistic nationalism to say that American experiment offered the world a first, shining example of a truly viable democracy. And the Revolution that spawned it, while narrow in scope at the beginning – begun over a tax dispute and the subsequent limited debate over appropriate parliamentary representation – ended up being a true revolution in political thought, after which the world would never be the same. The French Revolution rolled up right behind it, as did the heads of its political opponents, followed in turn by African slaves in Haiti successfully taking back their freedom only a few years later, when they rightly murdered many of their French masters and put some of their heads on stakes. Napoleon bugged out of the "New World" and sold Jefferson the middle third of North America for a song.

Even Ho Chi Minh based his liberation movement's principles upon our own, calling upon the philosopher John Locke's idea that if a government – for which the sole raison d'être is the securement of one's property in both possessions and rights – is ever found to be negligent in doing so, or does not possess the mandate of the people, it is the right and even duty of said people to reform or even oust the government. The assumptions of Locke and the American Revolutionaries are quite radical in the conclusions they draw. Too bad the United States had become so conservative in its operation that it had completely forgotten the radical politics that created it, which would soon lead to the French being restored in power in what was then called Indochina.

By the time we get to the creation of a Bill of Rights as political compromise, as a stipulation for the Anti-Federalists signing off on a new constitution that created a central government with incredibly strong power, something that grated against their post-Revolution near-paranoia that assumed that central governments were doomed to become corrupt and abusive of their powers, the world would be witness to the most radically progressive political document ever created that protected the rights of the individual.

And the Bush administration has been taking an arrogant, extended piss on both the spirit and even the letter of our founding documents throughout his entire administration's political reign.

So I don't hate Bush just because I'm a bleeding-heart liberal with a kneejerk response to anyone of a "conservative" stripe. I love the ideals of America and its Constitution, even with the few glaring flaws that eventually needed "working out" – namely, oh, you know, its protection of the right to own human beings, not explicitly outlining the extension of political rights to anyone than propertied white men (having a certain amount of property was a requirement for most states until the early 1800's).

But the ideals espoused in the Constitution are as infective as they are inspired. Almost all governments in the world to that point were a system of some kind of monarchical, hereditary rule. Most societies in the world worked within a social system that explicitly placed some kind of elite at the top and gave them most political rights. Whether you're looking at the English gentry or Korean yangban, around the world, it was variations on the same theme. So it went with the peasantry, who were thought of in most societies in the world as barely human. There were exceptions, sure, but they were either too brief or too unsustainable to be duplicated.

America's democratic legacy has not to do so much with its endurance in time, but with the number of true revolutionaries inspired by our example. Right after our came the French Revolution, then the Haitian, and on and on throughout history."

You should be able to easily see that nothing's changed about how I define pride in America since then, except the political landscape around me. So if you think I just jumped out of the woodwork with this sudden pride 2 days ago, you're wrong. And I am no need of a history lecture, thank you very much.

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.

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!

"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!

"Today Is a New World"

I can't really parse this in writing yet, because the last 3 days of Obamacizing has left me very behind in work. But I had to share the words of Mayor Cory Booker, who points out that now, "America is not about left or right, but backward of forward." Yeah! More after I get caught up a bit.

Mofo WON!

That's all I have to say right now. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!