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I've decided now is a good time to transition back out of GD : Presidential and into General Discussion. Here's my last GD : P post for the 2008 election cycle.
Shortly after the election, I talked to my mother. I mentioned that it was weird to finally be on the winning side of something. She said, "I know! You won't be able to complain any more!" I said, "Oh, sure I'll be able to complain!"
She was surprised. "What could you have to complain about?"
I said, "Well, my guess is that Obama will disappoint me by not being progressive enough. Also I don't think he's going to be that good on GBLT rights. So that's probably what I'll complain about, mainly."
I still expect to be disappointed on both counts. But I have discovered that actually, I don't spend a lot of time complaining about the Clinton retreads, the Hillary for SoS pick, and all that whatnot. I've been thinking about why that is, and it comes down to a few things:
1) I have accepted the fact that persons whose politics match up with mine cannot be elected to the presidency of the United States.
2) Having noted that Obama was far more successful following his own strategies in the general election than he would have been if he had executed any of my brilliant ideas for how to win, I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to how politics works, he knows a shitload more about it than I do.
3) My free time is less plentiful than it used to be, and some things are not worth the investment any more. Second-guessing cabinet picks falls into that category. I'm not yet detached enough from reality to believe that anyone in Obama's administration is going to recommend against choosing someone based on what they read in my piss-ant DU journal.
4) I believe that Obama has earned the benefit of the doubt.
I want to talk about #4 because it connects to something I have been thinking about on and off lately. We are coming out of an 8 year period of stunningly bad government. I mean bad in every way--corrupt, malicious, incompetent, dishonest, and deeply, deeply stupid. I know that living through the past 8 years has made me disgusted, cynical, and intensely suspicious of everything the government does. Indeed, I now berate myself for having been stupid enough not to realize that Bush's bailout plan could not possibly have had any chance of success. After all, after 8 years of failure, why should I have believed for a moment that someone in that administration might have come up with a good idea?
But change is not something that a politician brings *to* you. You have to make it happen; and one of the things that has to change, if things are going to get better--is our own attitude toward our own government. I'm not suggesting that we all start working on hymns of praise to be sung in mass chorus at the inaugural parade. But I do think that we are going to become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, if we don't all work on getting ourselves *out* of the dark, bitter, paranoid place that the Bush administration put us into.
With that in mind, it might be worth thinking about what will be exiting the White House on January 20th, and what we will be able to let go once that happens.
Now buried beneath the critiques du jour are the stories that were floating a couple weeks ago about what Obama is planning to do about Guantanamo. At least in the stuff I read, everyone took it as read that Guantanamo will be closed. The question still to be worked out is what to do with the inmates. Many of them will be released; many of them will be tried; but some of the guys on Obama's legal team are apparently working on developing some kind of "special" judicial process for inmates who "can't" be tried in public because it would create "national security issues." The object, apparently, is to create something which is more like a jury trial than Bush's bullshit "military tribunals," but which would not require the public exposure of CIA operatives, informants, double agents, etc. etc. etc.
So, I read this stuff. My eye is inevitably drawn to the "special" judicial process. I think, great. More denial of civil/legal/human rights, more attempts to circumvent due process in the name of national security. Of course I want everyone to have a fair trial in public and for all the shit that has happened inside that horrible place to be brought to light. Of course this is not a perfect solution.
But my eye should perhaps also linger on something else: the question of this second-tier judicial process arises because Obama is going to close down Guantanamo.
And perhaps it will not do me or the nation any harm if I take a moment to say: Obama is going to close down Guantanamo. That is fucking AWESOME.
Christ almighty, how long have I been hating that place? For how many years and in how many ways has the knowledge of what is being done to people in my name in that place been haunting my conscience and infecting my imagination? The day I finally know that it actually has been shut the fuck down, that nobody is being held there any more, what buried anger, shame, grief and guilt is going to finally break through the layers of concrete that I've had to lay down over my raw emotions during the past 8 years just to keep myself functional?
This is just one example. It happens to be an example I care about, but anyway, I think it's going to be a pattern repeated for a lot of us: a good thing will happen, and there will be something bad embedded in it. It is of course our duty as citizens to recognize the bad and to continue fighting it. But it is also our responsibility to recognize positive change when it happens, and not to reject and dismiss it because it doesn't conform to our ideals or because we have just forgotten that government can do something other than damage.
I really don't think I have even begun to assess how much damage living in Bush's world has done to me as a person. I think figuring out the right way to adjust myself to Obama's world is going to be an interesting process. And I also think that what people here (including on occasion myself) have attacked as negativity, pointless bitching, etc., is also the evidence of how difficult that adjustment will be for many of us to make. Blind trust is not healthy, nor is it something most of us are temperamentally capable of offering anyway. But I do think that Obama has earned and indeed needs from us some measure of trust--that though he may not always share our ideologies, he at least has decent intentions, a lot of intelligence, and a much better understanding of how politics works than, for instance, I do.
After January 20, 2009, George W. Bush will be gone. Someone else will be president--someone who, no matter what you may believe, is much more fit for the job and much more likely to do some good with it than W. ever was. If, after that transition takes place, we persist in acting and feeling as if nothing has changed, we are only hurting ourselves.
During these past eight years it felt, to me anyway, as if I had crossed through the looking glass into a new and horrifying world from which there would never be an escape. But in fact, the Bush years are not going to last forever--unless we refuse to leave him behind.
To prepare myself for this day, I sometimes practice saying goodbye to him. I imagine him skulking out of the White House with his bag of golf clubs and loading them into the back of his non-union moving van and driving away in silence while Obama's inaugural parade marches joyfully and boisterously down the street. History has left you behind, George. We are all stuck grappling with your dark, vile, catastrophic legacy. But don't you stick around; you'll be no help at all. We're all headed out to do what has to be done to clean up your mess, and hopefully to build something new, something that can measure up to the joy and hope everyone felt that night they discovered that another world was possible. Go on back to your darkness, you little, little man, and leave the world to those of us who know how to love it.
I'll see y'all over in General Discussion,
The Plaid Adder
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