44

We have a great deal of healing to do as a country. As Barack Obama was announced as our new president, the bar I was in (see above photo) burst into a raucous roar as the frustration and anger of eight years was purged. Cheers of "Oh-Bah-Mah!" rang out, along with assorted random cheering and high fives as some hugged, and some cried. And it was at that point I found myself thinking that the perfect way to truly capture the feeling of unity among all the strangers packed into that tiny place was a song to emphasize our pride in America. But I quickly realized there isn't one anymore. At least not for the majority of those in that bar, who felt so disenfranchised by their country. The Star Spangled Banner. God Bless America. These no longer adequately capture the current mood of our country, and singing one of them would have been forced. But it felt like that was what we should have been doing. I think other people wanted to sing those songs too, but their pride in this country has been shaken by the path she has taken over the past several years. This is why Obama was elected. He as promised to restore our pride and unify our country. This is his most difficult and important task.

Perhaps what I found most incredible about last night was Obama's speech. We have watched him deliver spine-chiller upon spine-chiller, but last night was the one that I will never forget. Not because of the packed bar I was in where everyone stopped -- and in a room of 60 drunken and dazed San Franciscans the only sound heard over Obama's voice was the soft crying of those overwhelmed -- but because of how unbelievably cool he was when he was on that stage. There was no look of surprise on his face as he accepted what had just happened to him and his country. There was no tinge of fear in his voice as he spoke. He was just ready. It blew my mind. The command he possessed over that moment is something I will never forget.

There is no way to overstate the pressure President-Elect Obama now finds himself in, under, and around. He has taken our country on a twenty-one month journey that started with confusion, doubt, and skeptecism which morphed into anxiety, excitement, and that all important word, hope, and erupted last night with an unbridled euphoria nationally and worldwide the likes of which escape my recollection. In Chicago hundreds of thousands (if not a million plus) packed the park where Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech. In San Francisco bars and streets overflowed with thousands of deliriously happy Obama supporters. People in far-off and forgotten lands flooded streets with signs of an American President's likeness, chanting his name with a belief that he is a true prophet of change for an America that they feel has left them behind. He has promised that he will change the world. Certainly he is not the first person to promise this, but I think he is the first person who we actually believe can do it. This expectation that Barack Obama has built for himself is incredible, and any failure to deliver upon it will be devastating.

One of the biggest dangers I think we face at this stage is allowing the enormity of this achievement to immunize our new President from criticism. I have never been more grateful for the two-month lag between election day and the swearing-in ceremony, because I think the next 75 days will allow us to fully absorb what has happened and get us to a point where we can look at Obama as our president, and not just as our first black president. This is important, for if we are to truly realize both the change Obama worked so hard for, and the acceptance Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought so hard to achieve, we must treat President-Elect Obama as any other President, and we must not be afraid to hold his feet to the fire when they need to be, as our vigilance is our greatest resource. We must remember that he works for us. This is our country, every bit as much as it is his. Obama's earned this election in large part because of ability to inspire, but that alone is not enough to make him a great President. We must make him prove to us that he can lead our country, and we must hold him responsible for the decisions he makes, both good and bad.

I believe that I will be one of Obama's biggest critics as his term unfolds, because there are a lot of things he plans to do that I do not agree with. As I have said before, I am a center-right kind of guy, and Obama strikes me as a far left on several policy matters that I feel are hugely important. I do not go into these next four years with the unbridled enthusiasm I witnessed many express last night because I fear that there is a chance this young man's limited executive experience could prove costly as he inherits a country on the verge of a tailspin. All that said, last night I could not help but be overwhelmed by pride for what we had done. Forty years ago, Barack Obama would not have been allowed to use the same water fountain as me. Today he leads my country. Indeed, we have come a long way.

As I started typing this into a Google Document, I noticed every time I typed "Obama" I would get the dotted red spell check line underneath telling me I had misspelled it. So I went back and typed a bunch of different last names, just to see. Jefferson. Lincoln. Kennedy. Reagan. Clinton. McCain. No red line. It wasn't until I got near the end of this that the red line stopped appearing. I guess Google Docs got the clue that "Obama" wasn't a typo, but something it should learn to accept.

Welcome to the new America.

America

I'm registered independent because I don't want to be a democrat or a republican or a libertarian or a green, I want to be an American who comes to my own conclusions. I've never understood the concept of subscribing to a group (and what that group believes) rather than a set of independently understood ideals. I have a number of reasons for this, but high on my list is a belief that organizations comprised of like-minded individuals lead to groupthink, and groupthink leads to a fortification of beliefs that is often coupled with an insulation to those who question their beliefs. Pursuant to this, I find subscribers to organizations of like-minded individuals are often told what the organization believes, and this leads to "talking points" and what I like to refer to as "responding points." These people know what their organization believes (and how to recite it) and they know how to respond to people who espouse a different belief. And the danger in this is that it becomes automatic for a lot of these people, and it helps feed their insulation. This is okay for some things, but not okay for social and political opinions.

If you are reading this, you are likely aware that to this point I have found myself right of center for most of my life. This has caused me a fair amount of grief and nagging from both my liberal and conservative friends. I'm not complaining. People have the right to question me, and it's up to me to have answers. If one's beliefs aren't occasionally questioned, either by himself or by others, they will never evolve, and that is dangerous. But I feel that all too often I am questioned by those who are unwilling to hear my beliefs beyond my answers. "You think people should have the right to keep and bear arms? You Republican war monger!" "You think gay people have the right to marriage? You Liberal Hippie!" People hear what they hear and draw an immediate conclusion. It's exhausting.

My conservative friends have a very black-and-white view of the way the world works, and this lends itself to being very inhospitable to people like me. It is all or nothing with them, and they are very supportive of their own kind. They think I am a fake because I don't subscribe to National Review and I question John McCain's VP pick. My liberal buddies, on the other hand, are incredibly passionate. There's a definite "us against the world" attitude in the liberal community, even when that isn't the case. And they go after their causes with an intoxicating vigor. However, that vigor often leads to intolerance and occasionally clouds them from fully considering the best way to achieve their goals as well as what achieving their goals would actually mean.

But I don't believe that every conservative is close-minded and stubborn or that every liberal is flaky and misguided -- I think there is a continuum that exists between those two extremes (and frankly, that continuum extends well beyond the two extremes I mentioned), and people exist on this continuum . And more specifically, people's individual beliefs oftentimes occupy different parts of this spectrum. You are allowed to support gay marriage but think that global warming might not be entirely anthropogenic. That's okay.

This brings me to a couple of nights ago, having a conversation with my father in which I attempt to explain to him my feelings on Obama and McCain and that while I'm not particularly excited by either of them, I think I'm voting for Obama. I proceeded to attempt to lay out a number of well thought out ideas to support my decision, but I found that trying to get through to him was nearly impossible. He's a McCain guy, and I'm fine with that. Reasonable people are allowed to vote for McCain. But what frustrated me was my dad deciding that since I wasn't on board with a McCain presidency that I was a flake. "I guess you can't move to San Francisco and not catch the disease [of liberalism]." Those were his exact words, and I'm going to tell you it pissed me off. I don't care that he thinks I'm a liberal, I care that he has caught the disease of unreasonable discourse. I'm instantly unreasonable because I think McCain has shitty education policies and doesn't deserve to be president just because he's a war hero (and he is). Really? I think it is sad that this is what discourse has come to.