On Getting Older and Looking Back

As a twenty-something coming of political age in the 2000’s I’ve never been subject to love and admiration for a politician.  There have been no JFK’s or FDR’s to win over my adulation and respect.  Instead, I’ve witnessed and experienced a general disdain for politics and it’s current state of affairs.  A climate in which everyone is a talking head, fearful that saying what is actually on their mind will automatically rule them out of favor with the largest constituency.  All this amounts to a stalemate in the public dialog and a general apathetic sense of helplessness towards the entire process.

I was excited to exercise my right to vote when I first got the chance in 2000 and felt demoralized when George W. Bush won and would later become furious with Al Gore for not contesting the vote count.  I eventually decided that Bush had bought the vote in Florida and had Gore fought for it he would have become our President, not the Texan with an ineptness for speech.  In short, the exchange played happily into the situation that I was destined to find myself in, general disgust for the entire political  community and process.   Here is the bullish right and the timid left, neither willing to engage in dialog but more interested in power than my and my fellow countryman’s well being.

Gore for his part has done all he can to make amends with me.  As President he could never have accomplished what he has in the wake of 2000’s failure.  An Inconvenient Truth has almost singlehandedly galvanized the world community’s awareness of the environmental crisis.  Still, I can’t get out of my head Tipper Gore’s censorship mania and will never forgive Al himself for laying down the Presidential race.  I voted for him, didn’t he appreciate it?  Why wouldn’t he want to see if my vote, and in turn my life, counted?  I felt betrayed and embittered.

I was nineteen years worth of anger and frustration on September 11′th.  My acridity lent itself to a feeling of  “we got what we deserved.”  It’s a shameful and unthinkable now at twenty four but that’s how I felt.  The record high approval ratings for Bush didn’t ease my woes but fanned the flames.  I remember running into an old friend.  He was generally like minded, though perhaps a bit dense if I remembered correctly, but here he was in a Navy uniform recruiting at the mall.  I laughed at him and asked what he was doing to which he replied “do you remember 9/11? I joined so you wouldn’t have to.”  (then why are you asking me now?) I wanted to vomit.  I was already convinced that Bush was going to use the attack as leverage for Iraqi assets and seeing my old friend play into his hands was enough to make me sick.  I continued on with my general anger.

In hindsight I’m beginning to understand what I was feeling and why.  The saber rattling, the fallout and division of Vietnam left the baby-boomers polarized.  Be sure too that this apathy still enjoys it’s firm grip upon our beloved nation.  I was being wedged out of our political process because I didn’t understand the extremism and subsequent sensationalism left in the wake of the 60’s.

In looking back into these times I wanted to identify with the Abbie Hoffman’s of the revolution but found the antics deplorable.   The anarchist community’s uncanny ability to organize events was a conflict of interest I couldn’t abide.  The zeal and intention was admirable but the argument untenable.  On the other hand the Richard Nixon’s of the time were less laughable and more frightening.  Hard nosed, fearful and power hungry were the tenet’s of the right, qualities that don’t speak to me of good sound judgment much less to say about a genuine concern for my well being and future.

What I’m realizing now is the public discourse in the past 50 years has been governed by this fragmentation.  The feeling so often cited of the time that we as a nation were obtaining our national identity was anything but.  The individual was finding new avenues for expression but the community itself was experiencing a brutal decomposition.  Perhaps the longest lasting effects of the Vietnam war wasn’t in our public and personal identity but a perpetual pigeon hole for our politicians.   The result is an apathetic national community and an apoplectic yet stagnant public dialog.  Years later the public personification was this, to the right was June and Ward Cleaver, the left Eddie Haskel.  Thinking about it now the whole situation reeks of a Cold Civil War mentality, the sabers were rattling and I can hear them echo today.

It was people like John Fahey, Captain Beefheart, Public Enemy, Miles Davis, John Steinbeck, Nelson Algren and Sam Peckinpah who would first subject me to my love for America.  The art world would expose me to the human predicament.  Then it was an intellectual community who would bring me around to the approach of living we have adopted here; Henry David Thoreau, Howard Zinn, John Lewis Gaddis, Sigmund Freud and Lerone Bennett Jr.  An elementary look into the Cold War and Mao Tse Tung’s China made it abundantly clear that the fathers of our constitution were on to something.    The human condition wasn’t fit to be nor to be governed by a dictator.  The idea of reassigning our need for conflict from physical violence to capitol gain intrigued me.  It was not long ago that I could pen a sentence with the words “our beloved nation” free of my former snide and condescending self.  Suddenly I found myself appreciative of my culture and our approach to living.  The capitalist framework, along with all its horrific faults, fit my view of humanity to the Darwinian T.

So where now does that leave me?  As I doggedly watch the Presidential primary’s develop I have to ask myself how I became so interested and why am I filled with hope after having been crushed so many times before.  One could say my general stubbornness and curiosity has led me here with little error but the real answer would be Barack Obama.

Obama is the open minded, pragmatic politician I’ve never seen before.  Here’s a man who can reconcile his Christianity with a pro-choice ethos.  That’s not politics, that is empathy, a quality I hold in the highest regard.  This trait of his, this empathy, is very telling once you put it into context.  Obama isn’t of the baby boomer generation.   The rift isn’t at play in his politics in defining his policies but rather his approach.  My disdain for this static age is his disdain too.  When I first became interested in Obama I noticed this immediately but it wasn’t without much thought and outside analysis that I was able to define it as such.

Of course the finer points of his platform speak to me but to go into detail would here would be of little benefit.  It’s more appropriate to say the Obama platform fits snug under this umbrella of empathy.  Perhaps of greater worth would be to speculate what he would mean to other people.  Who among us would have greater legitimacy in the Arab world than Barack Hussein Obama?  He grew up in Muslim schools and let’s not forget his continued objection to our Iraqi engagement. He’s a character that would be easy for the Arab community to communicate with (something we pretty much refuse to do currently) and possibly even trust.   If that isn’t an exciting candidacy I don’t know what is.

In writing this I recall the tears I’ve shed for this country.  I cried when Bush was reelected, when I read The 9/11 Report and while watching Obama speak.  They are tears of hope and love for humanity.  It’s kind of hard for me to sum up my excitement for his candidacy in any other terms.  I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed somebody seeking power to do what he feels is right rather than simply wield it for what it’s worth and that’s the feeling I get from Obama.  I wonder if this is how people felt when they watched Kennedy or Roosevelt speak.

I’m still afraid of what is to come but now I have hope.  From here on out I’ll have my eyes peeled to the blogs and newspapers to see what happens next in our early caucuses and if I was the type to cross my fingers, I’d do that too.

~ by ckloewer on November 16, 2007.