I'm still somewhat off-balance and off my feed from that horrid September, but I'm getting there. And so is the market.
Licking the Zeitgeist
Go ahead, let the Obamafied optimism wash over you. For now
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 10, 2008
You might think it's all said and done. You might think the economic crisis and the nonstop war and the mandatory belt-tightening means that, despite the Obama-led overhaul about to happen in Washington, it's still locked down and certain that you have far less mobility, elasticity, karmic wiggle room than you had hoped.You would be wrong.
I say go ahead. You can still do it. You can still allow a rush of progressive confidence -- and even a crazy hint of liberal complacency -- begin to wash over you like a warm breeze, like a mad shot of unbridled potential. Despite the housing crisis and the fiscal firebombs and the ugly talk of those enormous, untapped strongholds of racism that won't truly emerge until Election Day, optimism is still allowed. Required, even.
And that nagging thought that, no matter how glorious an Obama win might be, the stunning all-American hole Bush has dug for us is simply far too deep to emerge from unscathed? Let it go.
Just for now. Just for the moment, as you stare in joyous wonder at all the state and national polls that are increasingly leaning Obama's way, if not fallen over completely. Plenty of time in the coming few weeks to imagine the uglier possibilities, America's darker demons, late October surprises. Save that for the final week.
Because the truth is, the notion of an Obama presidency yields many gifts. Foremost: a refreshed intellectual climate, a far higher quality of basic discourse. Squinting and bumbling and "is our children learning" are out, articulation and oratory nuance are in. Out: aw-shucks "go with my gut" Joe Six-pack pseudo-cowboy Jesus-says. In: thoughtfulness, polysyllabic words, sentences with complicated construction and meaning.
The bar has been raised. Or rather, the bar has been lifted out of the cave where it was dumped eight years ago; it's been polished up, reinstalled.
Will you pause, even for a moment, to mourn the end of shrill "culture war" quasi-issues that clogged the pores of the national complexion and gave Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter their careers? Bible literalism, creationism, intelligent design, and screeching over stem cells, flag burning, "f--k" on TV, abstinence education, feminism, censorship, nipples in public, pregnant teens, birth control, the "war on Christmas"?
The "culture warriors" still scattered across the megachurches and Fox News channels of America, they are muted. Their throats are hoarse from all the screaming. No one is listening anymore. Do you see them there, off in the corner of the Olive Garden, re-scouring "Left Behind: The Final Victory" for something they might've missed, their skin turning translucent, their cough getting worse, wondering why it didn't happen for them as the New Reality begins to sink in?
They know their 15 minutes are up. They know they had their shot, gave it everything they had. Six solid years of complete control, their most potent leaders, their best ideas, war and terror and jingoism, anti-gay anti-women anti-science. Also: a million new surveillance cameras, ten thousand right-wing judges, a front-loaded Supreme Court, pummeling the line separating church and state, blaming gays for 9/11, keeping Christian rock alive, creepy museums in Kentucky where humans walk with dinosaurs.
And they failed. Spectacularly. Historically. Unsurprisingly.
In fact, their failure is now so complete, nearly every idea they offered up now proven to be so regressive and detrimental to the advancement of the human experiment, theirs will go down in history as one of the most profound collapses of any totalitarian power cluster in our short history. Mark your calendars. You were there. You survived. Barely.
Be not like them. Be generous, forgiving, compassionate. Offer them a cup of coffee, a well-thumbed copy of "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," an empathetic pat on the back as you pass by on your way to Burning Man to pick up your fallen hopes and your fire and your newly grinning gods. For they are as lost as the undead, doomed to forever wander the cold purgatory of their shell-shocked fears.
At last, a president who really does care about black people. And minorities. And women. Children. People who make less than two million a year. Animals. Ecosystems. Imagine.
Apathy is the new polyester. Ennui is the new smoking. Willful belly button-pickin' ignorance of world events, environmental issues, energy policy is no longer considered cute and obvious and painfully American. Can you imagine?
No longer will it be tolerable when chatting up a sweet young thing or an older tasty thing at a bar or fetish dungeon or Whole Foods cheese aisle and casually toss in a reference to Obama's solar initiative or the multifaceted cultural upheaval happening in China or India, to watch his eyes glaze over as he shrugs and stares at his shoes and mumbles something about getting baked while lubing his skateboard and watching Xtreme Motocross on ESPN2. Next generation's motto: Engage the world, or become irrelevant.
Oh, there will be recoil. Count on it. There will backlash, green fatigue, a deep reluctance to engage a collective mind so unused to thinking for itself. No matter. We could very well be on the cusp of something new. There is an opportunity to be reborn.
As Bill Maher points out, much of the U.S. has been primed for years to become like a great European city-state: cultured, world-wise, intellectually curious, inclusive and sophisticated, less obsessed with sour Puritanical prohibitions and more fascinated by the interplay of body and mind and spirit and national identity.
But it's this other half, this uneducated, terrified right-wing Bible set, that's shackled us to the mammoth cruise ship of ignorance, refusing to let us evolve.
It is, as always, a choice. But right now, it's a choice that hasn't been this clear, this available, in ages. And right now, it's certainly helpful, if not mandatory, to be just a little optimistic about it.
Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark.
Link to the original here.
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