Except I didn't really land in Oz. No, it's more like Oz became mixed into America. The wizard is now President (the real wizard, not the one behind the curtain), and surely they're painting the path to the White House yellow. Do you think if someone doused Cheney with a bucket of water, he'd melt? Maybe I exaggerate, except it's rather impossible to exaggerate what I'm feeling. It is as if someone has given me back my heart, provided a huge dose of courage, and brought me home to a place where the President has a brain.
I know many of you have been waiting to hear from me about our President-Elect-Obama. I am so relieved, so happy, so overwhelmed with emotion, it's difficult to put it into words. In this one decision, America has finally decided to change the course we've been on the past eight years. We voted to end the war in Iraq, to end the unregulated gluttony of Wall Street, to improve public education, fix our health care system, find alternative energy sources, decrease the unemployment rate, and generally begin digging ourselves out the abyss we find ourselves in.
Now some would argue that while Obama talks a good game, he doesn't have experience to actually pull all of this off. I disagree. President Obama (doesn't that have the nicest ring to it) has quite a challenge in front of him. And it's not just one challenge, it's two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), an economic recession, a housing crisis, the highest national unemployment rate in decades, banks going bankrupt, our faltering position internationally. Not to mention the issues we've been trying to correct for over a decade and the current administration has just exacerbated: education, health care, social security. I certainly don't expect him to be able to fix it overnight, but I sleep better at night knowing the country's future will be placed in the hands of a man that I honestly believe has the best interest of the people of America at heart.
Electing Obama is also a tremendously emotional moment in history for so many of us. Our generation finally has a huge moment in American history to be proud, which is just amazing. Now I have something to balance out the memories of where I was on September 11, of my abject horror over the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina, my disgust over President Clinton's impeachment and the lack of impeachment for George W. Bush. Clinton may have been getting off with his aides, but Bush has a great deal of blood on his hands. And honestly, I hate to blame Bush. Cheney has a lot of blood on his hands. The GOP has a lot of blood on their hands. It took way too long for enough people in our country to recognize that fact, but they finally have. I wish the horror of Hurricane Katrina had never happened, but I know that if it had happened before Bush's re-election, there wouldn't have been a re-election. And we wouldn't be where we are now - at the bottom of very deep financial hole.
I am ecstatic to know that my children are growing up in a different America than the one I grew up in. An America that is finally in a position to start turning itself around. Our generation hasn't even had any leaps in our quest to achieve equality until now. When our teachers and parents taught us of freedom and equality, they spoke of Martin Luther King Jr and Harriet Tubman. There has not been such a huge leap for equality in fifty years. But while our children will learn of Martin Luther King, they will also have President Obama leading the country like it's the most natural thing in world. He is living proof that anything can and does happen in America. It is one thing to tell your children that all people are equal, but it's so much better to have that exemplified in real life. Children, after all, learn much better by doing as we do, than doing as we tell them.
I have on more than one occasion in past week, broken into tears speaking of our new President. People all over the country, all over the world, have been in tears over this election. Even my kids have been caught up in the excitement. Trouble was quite confused to see Bush on the television the next day speaking of, "approaching the finish line." "Isn't it over?" he wanted to know. "Didn't we win?"
Yes we did, my little man. Yes, we did.
Its too bad that Bush clock didnt end on the 4th... wont be long.
Posted by: Alice | November 17, 2008 at 02:41 PM