(no subject)
I keep watching videos of Obama's St. Paul speech when he clinched the nomination, and while we all know it's an absolutely stunning display of oratory and rhetorical skill, I am still, three times in, getting choked up and nearly crying at the sheer amazement of the fact that, as far as I'm concerned with the lay of the land as it now stands, America will have a black man for its president. A black man as president of the United States of America.
Let that sink in.
I am in no way saying that the mere identity politics of it all is cause for celebration - certainly an amazing, talented man, editor of the Harvard Law Review for fuck's sake - but I am saying that having some awareness of the history of race and ethnicity in America, part of me just stares and tries not to break down when I think about my country and its amazing capacity to right its wrongs and progress, seemingly against all odds, through nothing more than the dedication of its citizens. I may not be a jingoist, but I can never be said to not be a patriot -- Obama makes me remember that, at its best, no other nation in the history of human existence can reach our soaring heights.
I'm going to go make a Gimlet and toast to Thomas Paine and immigrant waves and draft dodgers and conscript liberators of Europe and atheists living next to baptists and freedom riders and small towns and times square and the shining beacon on a hill that is never finished that is the beating heart of this land. It is so incredibly improbable that it has succeeded, and that it continues to inspire the collective imagination of our whole beautiful planet that if you dare to stand up and risk for what you believe in, nothing can truly stop it. That idea should make all men and women pause, because it is radical and revolutionary and empowering. And it's Obama. And it's America.
Let that sink in.
I am in no way saying that the mere identity politics of it all is cause for celebration - certainly an amazing, talented man, editor of the Harvard Law Review for fuck's sake - but I am saying that having some awareness of the history of race and ethnicity in America, part of me just stares and tries not to break down when I think about my country and its amazing capacity to right its wrongs and progress, seemingly against all odds, through nothing more than the dedication of its citizens. I may not be a jingoist, but I can never be said to not be a patriot -- Obama makes me remember that, at its best, no other nation in the history of human existence can reach our soaring heights.
I'm going to go make a Gimlet and toast to Thomas Paine and immigrant waves and draft dodgers and conscript liberators of Europe and atheists living next to baptists and freedom riders and small towns and times square and the shining beacon on a hill that is never finished that is the beating heart of this land. It is so incredibly improbable that it has succeeded, and that it continues to inspire the collective imagination of our whole beautiful planet that if you dare to stand up and risk for what you believe in, nothing can truly stop it. That idea should make all men and women pause, because it is radical and revolutionary and empowering. And it's Obama. And it's America.