Shit rolls down hill...

I did not think I would be disheartened merely one day after the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States but it only took one article in the Toronto Star to do that. Three U.S. states ban gay marriage

According to this article two groups of oppressed people, African-Americans and Hispanics, long denied equal rights in the US have taken it upon themselves in California to perpetuate the oppression of another minority group, gays and lesbians. I find it incredibly offensive that people long punished for not fitting into the power structures of mainstream America should use their newfound political power to deny equality to others.

This kind of narrow vision and total lack of compassion is an abuse of the very hope that Obama has offered. In his acceptance speech he was so eloquently inclusive yet now his own supporters have already begun to repudiate that hope. Freedom and equality are not items to be parsed through referenda. These are taken to be inherent. America has stumbled in its first day out of the shadows,

CNN calls it...

And now we can all take a deep breath. There is a certain level of letdown that inevitably comes at a moment like this. What now? Will it turn out okay?

We have to believe it will. We cannot let our worst fears or some inherent pessimism overwhelm us now at a moment when we may have an opportunity to move away from a tired and worn out way of understanding the world of politics and power. Will the world be radically different? It already is.

As goes Ohio...

Is it over now? Ohio was just called for Obama. No Republican has eve won the White House without Ohio. I want to believe to relax, to celebrate but I cannot forget 2000 or 2004.

Still = Ohio I hear Neil Young singing but the words are bittersweet now.

Symbolic power.

Do you remember Jesse Helms? He was the iconoclastic Republican Senator from North Carolina who resisted civil rights almost to his dying breath. Tonight the Democrats took his old seat from Elizabeth Dole the incumbent. Maybe it is trivial. Maybe it does not mean much but this happened in the heart of the Old South.

Now Obama is leading in the polls there. It has not been called but already Obama is up to 174 Electoral College votes to 48 for McCain.

Sigh of relief...

Okay Pennsylvania has been called for Obama. But what does that mean? I want to believe it is a good omen but I cannot resist that voice of caution - maybe doom. Will this lead to the White House?

More importantly what does it really mean? Yes there will be change? What kind of change? Is it all an illusion of hope? In the end we all must decide to act. No leader does it all. The best leaders make people believe they can act for themselves. Maybe that is what matters the most. Having our belief in the possibility of change restored.

Hints and allegations...

Maybe it is about family. Maybe it is because many Canadians have American relatives. But whatever the connection we seem to respond to what is happening in the US in an emotionally charged way. So when I saw the first two results posted by CNN I felt a visceral lurch in my gut.

Vermont for Obama. Kentucky for McCain. But what about Virginia? Whither Florida? I may have to put on gloves to save my fingernails.

Watching the world change....

This is the first time I have ever blogged in real time but this is just too important. I grew up in the time when America fell from a state of grace to being the problem child of the Free World. That whole idea of the Free World has fallen into a measure of disrepute as well and I cannot claim to mourn its passing.

It was an idea born of a time that managed to compress complexity into a rigid model of good/evil. It left little space of questions that even hinted at the possibility of a nuanced understanding of how good people can make bad choices or any accounting for the price to be paid for decisions based on greed and narrow nationalism.

Perhaps now we can emerge from this terrible time. Maybe we could even start a whole new conversation, one that opens a space for all of the possibilities of human excellence.

Hope restored...

It struck me this morning, as Americans continue to vote that there is an enormous sense of relief emanating from this election. There has been tremendous anger directed at Americans and while much of it is in response to what has been seen as arrogance and unilateralism I believe the depth of the anger can best be understood as resulting from a sense of betrayal.

America was the first modern democracy, one that set the standard for all others that followed. It was the beacon of hope, the purveyor of dreams. America was supposed to be the "city on the hill"; not the one described by Reagan but the one that said:

Give me you tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Today that hope may be returning and the world yearns to embrace America once more.

Perhaps this time our dreams will be less ambitious, our expectations more reasoned. For if America wandered from it path, in some measure that happened because no one nation could ever bear the burden that was laid upon America after World War II. Yes, they took it up willingly but they also did so at the urging of other nations. This time as we welcome her back we must all reflect on this.