They were cheering in Antarctica. “Obama is now the leader of the world,” a man said in Germany. If you didn’t notice the shooting stars, it’s only because the night sky was too full of fireworks to see them.
Jesse Jackson’s tears ran down his cheeks, mirroring our own. I remember twenty-five years ago taking the children to see him in Union Square Park in San Francisco. Young, full of fire, energy, and hope, he was so certain that his Rainbow Coalition would bring us together and remake the world. Now his tears join millions of others in a pure and prismatic river, through which we can finally see the rainbow.
It’s like waking up in one of those science fiction novels where the sky is emerald, the air shimmers with gold, and graceful little creatures with musical antenna on their heads ask politely if you would like to go for a ride to see the moons of Nastum.
Every once in a while on this plodding old earth, something quietly spectacular happens. And despite the certainty of future hardship nothing can ever be the same, because perception itself is altered.
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We owe so many so much. Our greatest thanks must go to the Republicans for their redoubtable efforts to recreate the 19th century, their attempts to plunder the American economy for their own gain, suppress civil liberties, disenfranchise minorities, strip the middle class of hope and the world of respect. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Thanks to John McCain for abandoning his principles and running a dishonest, manipulative, and mean spirited campaign. When you have no fresh ideas or effective strategies for dealing with the country’s problems, character assassination is the obvious answer. Way to go, Senator!
Enormous thanks to Sarah Palin for her complete ignorance of the world and her cheerful cluelessness about that ignorance. As her beauty pageant coaches must have told her –nothing matters, they’re here to see your figure—head up, smile and wink. What lifted the Governor out of the ordinary was her insouciant viciousness. No gutter was too mean for her to lick. As my favorite Irish novelist used to say, “What would shame her would sweat a hog.”
We look forward to hearing about your astonishing exploits in the future, Governor, up there in that icy little rift in the space time continuum.
Thanks to money, of which, for once, Democrats had enough–largely due to the small contributions of those who believed they were keeping it real.
Thank to the Boomers, for inventing the internet and letting the kids play with it. The kids went all Mario, and created the biggest Transformers in history.
And finally thanks to the American people—to all of us– for getting off the couch, turning off the sports channel, stepping out of our comfort zone of prejudice and rationalization, looking reality squarely in the eye, standing in line for hours and hours to have a say–and saying “enough!”
May God, Christ, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Aton, L. Ron Hubbard, Grosno from the planet Zylar, and the Great Turtle in the Sky bless America.
We’re back.