"How does he do it?" we're all asking ourselves. Sure, Barack Obama is a talented and gifted politician, but that doesn't explain "the movement": The cheering crowds, the inspired-by videos, the accusations that his followers are "delusional". What is the magic spell he holds over his supporters? If we could only figure out where he gets his 'mo' from, we could stop him, or copy him or at least wake up from this fantasy. What's the key to Barack Obama's rise? Just what is the "something" that he claims is happening in America?
Not to steal from Obama's thunder, but the truth is that every sweeping change a nation undergoes, whether for good or ill, is the result of some deep seated national anxiety; be it about taxation, abolition, financial insecurity or something else.
When I was in high school I always wondered why it wasn't until mid-May that my American History teacher got around to teaching about the 20th Century. It seemed that all the most important things; The Great Depression, WWII, Communism, The 60s, all happened then. As I got older, I realized that the consideration was political. While discussing the demise of the Whig Party is no big deal, no teacher wanted to have a parent chew them out for giving Nixon an apology or for judging Reagan's response to the AIDS crisis. But for us living in 2008, we have a clear line between past and present: Our world began on 9/11. Everything before that date is history.
The narrative vision of our country since then has been nightmarish. We're afraid. In fact, we're so afraid, we've declared war on fear itself and those who attack through fear. I won't repeat all the highlights of the last seven and a half years, be it anthrax or Abu Ghraib, the FREEDOM Act or Katrina, but if you're an average American, you feel under attack.
In the first days after September 11th, I wandered around the city imagining how someone could blow up whatever I happened to be standing near, on or under. I think the visceral closeness to the tragedy of that day inoculated me to the later bogeymen. I worked at ABC when the anthrax scares happened and my feeling towards terrorism now, while decidedly unpatriotic, is that it happens. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be prevented and fought, but if some wacko really wants to blow himself up, there's really only so much we, the people, can do about it. If living in a world free of terrorism means sacrificing our democracy, I'm not sure it's worth the trade off.
But, I'm in the minority on this. Survival trumps all other concerns and as George W. Bush has said on more occasion, the conflict we're in is "existential", which might be what sparked his interest in Camus'
The Stranger. I've just never been convinced that America was as fragile as all that and our long history has shown that our greatest dangers have never come from external sources, but from within ourselves.
Now, on that many would agree with me-- and point to the red sate blue state divide in this country. On one side, people like me are painted as fetus-killers who will take the surviving children and teach them to be radical homosexuals who will wage a covert war against anyone who isn't an atheist. On the other, any second an angry mob of fundamentalist Christians (oh fine,
Baptists) will come bursting through my door to burn all my books and force me to marry one of their thirteen wives. That there are separate news channels catering to each of these groups signals just how institutionalized our contempt for each other has become.
I changed the slogan of
The Modern Romantic yesterday. It's now "Poetry, politics and popcorn." It's Tony Kushner's recipe for what every good play needs and in college, I used to write scenes for my screenwriting class in a notebook I'd covered in gaffer's tape with those three words printed on the front. I only met Tony once, and he struck me as a nebbish, nervous man. His words though, have always excited me.
Before I came out to my Mom in high school, I remember seeing a local production of
Angels in America with our gay youth support group. It was my first gay
anything and unrepentant Roy Kohn, fabulous and flinty Belize, poor confused Joe and Louis and starry-eyed cursed Prior were the first proper homosexual role models I ever knew; for which I'm forever grateful. For a long time, I wanted to write a novel called "Hello, Supernova", a line from a speech he made in 2004 at Cooper Union. I have an opinion about The Dybbuk and think having a scene in which Laura Bush reads to dead Iraqi children is an act of patriotism. His plays are weird, angry things that shake you and make you think. That he manges to fill the seats is a testament not only to his genius, but to the fact that American political discourse isn't dead just yet.
In 2004,
Caroline, Or Change, Tony's first musical, premiered on Broadway. The eponymous heroine is a black Southern maid working for a middle-class Jewish family living in early Civil Rights era Louisiana and the plot revolves around the loose change cup by the dryer. It lasted three months. Caroline's big number in the show is called "Lot's Wife". In it she sings how "some folks march for civil rights, but I can't, I ain't got the heart" and then begs God to "make me forget so I stop bleeding/ scour my skin still I stop feeling/ take Caroline away, because I can't be her/ can't afford her, tear up my heart/ strangle my soul/ turn me to salt/a pillar of salt". She asks God, "Don't let my sorrow make evil of me."
The song randomly came up on my iPod today and it's what inspired this post. Hearing it, I immediately thought of Barack and what it will be like to hear this song again once he becomes President, how a long chapter in America's story of social injustice would be finished. Not that the book would be done, by any means.
Then, I thought about Caroline and how all art that aims to tell history winds up revealing more about the time it was composed in. She's such a reflection of ourselves. I can't tell you how many people have told me, "I don't think Barack can win in a general election because he's black and people are racist", to which I mutter under my breath, "even you, it seems."
Michael Chabon talked about how we've become a phobocracy, a country of fear and that "the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul." We look at the world around us and it's changing too fast. We look at our own society trembling at the new contours that erupt from every corner.
From the revolutionaries to the abolitionists to the civil rights marchers, when you look at the history of America, whenever we've been given the choice of choosing to follow a dream and perhaps fail at it and fail spectacularly or to live in cynicism we chose the former over the latter. Everything that's ever been good about this country has come from taking the risk in believing in something. That's what it means to make a choice in life.
A Gen X'er pal of mine told me he could never support any President, because they all have failings. We don't trust politicians or the government and deservedly so, but we're just as culpable for why they suck. We're not involved, we refuse to make choices. We believe it's better to reject them all than support one and find out that they aren't infallible god-kings. This is a dangerously anti-democratic attitude. Of course politicians are susceptible to corruption and of course they will make poor decisions. That's why they need our support; without it, they're left to the wolves and lobbyists.
We can choose to support a leader who will do their imperfect best to lead all Americans instead of rewarding a war of partisan attrition where gossip take precedence over governing. We can choose to not allow the heinous deaths of those who fell on 9/11 be hijacked as a justification to start needless wars, throw away human rights and strip the Constitution. We can either stay where we are now or we can choose to live in fear, either of the world abroad or of our neighbors. This is what is meant by "change" in our country.
And when the day comes in January that we inaugurate President Barack Obama, we will look around at each other and at ourselves and we will have changed. We will awake and see that we as a country have changed; that we aren't the thing that we thought we were for so long. And it won't won't have happened by magic, but by the choice to declare we won't let fear make evil of us.
Labels: personal, politics
