It's an odd feeling to be sitting on the sidelines of a revolution. After all, as a passionate idealist and humanitarian who positively lives for politics and cultural upheavals/advancements, I should be out in the streets (or on the blogs) cheering and jeering. It's been so in the past - I marched to close down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco when GHW Bush started the first Gulf War (I was 21), and I cried the night Bill Clinton won the presidency, forever becoming a Clintonphile come hell or high skirt lines. And both pre- and post-Iraq invasion, I never wavered from telling my friends, family, and radio listeners that it was all bunk - WMD is a myth! No blood for oil!
When Hillary Clinton was in the primaries, I actually felt my skin shimmer and glow when I'd watch her sweep over the boys in the debates. I thought Obama was fine - for a VP. I knew she was getting lambasted in the media and by other liberals just because she was a female Clinton (two things that have always seemed to irk the establishment), and I cried foul - to deaf ears. Of course, all of this came crashing down for me and millions of others who saw Clinton as the necessary and rightful heir to our American throne. That was the end. And I drink a little more these days.
Like many, I watched the DNC to hear Clinton, and felt betrayed all over again. (Memories of the Supreme Court handing over Florida to Bush in 2000 resurfaced as I watched superdelegates barrel over to Obama and the DNC refuse to seat MI and FL delegates - we'd just done to our own party what the GOP did to us eight years before, and no one was saying a word.)
I watched Obama's speech, too, and shrugged. I have a 19-year-old son, and all summer long I worked with kids whose ages ranged between 20-30, and I can tell you one thing - this is the most extreme "me" generation I've ever seen. Anyone who thinks he can inspire these latte drinking, CGI-superhero film watching, techno gadget loving kids to do something to help their fellow man - free of charge - is nuts. I've not known of one young person in the last ten years who's done a lick of community service if it wasn't mandated by a high school or college assignment. They don't wear fur, they recycle and they vote - that is the extent of our younger generation's participation in community service. So what will it take? Outside of a personal tragedy that inspires someone to fight for a cause or start a fund, it seems the only thing we can do to "inspire" service is pay the kids off - and $4,000 a year for tuition (is that for a junior college?) won't cut it. When I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and Project Angel Food in my 20s, I didn't know anyone who'd died of AIDS or anyone who'd lost their home, and the only thing I got for my service was the feeling that I'd done something worthwhile and good.
Service is the one topic - and it's at the center of Obama's platform - that drew me even closer to Clinton (I began the season open to both candidates, and believing that perhaps Clinton would not be my choice). But Clinton seemed to embody the reality of our culture - we want government to take care of all the mess for us, and leave us alone to pursue our individual dreams and have fun. While that isn't very idealistic, I can't think of any example to dispel it. When I told this to my son, his response was 1) that there just aren't that many opportunities to help out, and 2) that the colleges needed to provide more information to students about how to help. Of course I laughed - not enough ways to help? With homelessness out of control? Have you searched the word "volunteer" on the Internet? And it's the college's fault for not knocking on your door and asking you to participate? Me generation. If it's not delivered to you on a platter, you will not seek it out. So much for a personal sense of duty and sacrifice. With the exception of his self-absorption, my son is a great guy - and clearly a product of his time.
Still, I resolved to vote for Obama - regardless that the Obamaites had no sympathy for my loss and felt no need to reach out to me and my kind (what other choice did we have, they hammered). I decided not to take my anger out on Obama, who clearly can't control his eager, somewhat militant flock. Then Palin came along.
I watched the live announcement in Ohio and two things struck me: The Republicans are geniuses (which I always hate admitting) and Palin is hot. I did my research and found out that the snow-shoed governor and I had nothing in common - except for our ambition and relentless drive to move upward in our chosen fields.
The Dems guffawed at the choice, the GOP championed it. And we all know the truth lies somewhere in the middle - Palin is not experienced enough to be VP or President, but she's no dumbass Barbie either, and her rise in politics is the veritable embodiment of the American Dream that we talk so much about yet decide when and where to acknowledge. She is not the anti-Christ, though, as an agnostic and feminist, I love the idea that Satan's spawn could actually be a woman - we've come a long way baby!
The one thing Palin's appointment did for me was make me actually interested in the election again. My passions have been spent - the one I wanted isn't in the game and I've never been able to transfer that love over to Obama. Sue me. Or just call me an undereducated, blue collar racist, which seems to be the label du jour. Flies with vinegar or honey? The Obama flock are perhaps unfamiliar with the saying and its connotation.
The most hilarious part of Palin's nomination is how both the Left and the Right have used it to once again insult women. The Right, just by nature of the choice figured they could snatch up some disgruntled Hillbots - as if a vagina was all we wanted - and the Left, who hadn't taken a moment to praise Clinton in the primaries suddenly held her and her supporters in amazingly high esteem: "Palin's no Hillary!" they said. "Her supporters aren't dumb enough to fall for that one!" No, we were just dumb enough to support Clinton - even though you told us she couldn't win and you told her to drop out pretty much the day after the primaries began. Who would like to kiss our ass next?
Palin not only immediately reversed overall Dem opinion on Clinton (one Obama supporter actually told me that Hillary was great by comparison - as if that were a compliment!), and all cynical Obamaite remarks about how they didn't want Clinton as VP and that they didn't believe she really supported Obama dissipated (I love how they actually expected, after such a hard, passionate fight, that any human being could really be expected to suddenly not want what they just broke their ass to get). Clinton was now their golden girl as well - but just wait. If Obama loses, guess who'll be blamed? That's right - Clinton and her sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit. If a McCain presidency happens, it's because Hillary didn't do enough to stop him and because her supporters are just dumbass women who want an Ovarian Office. Um... maybe someone in Obama's circle oughtta tell him it's actually his job to stop McCain, not Clinton's.
But now the game is exciting and I'd be lying if I didn't say that watching the liberals go nuts over Palin is super fun - I'm still disgusted with my own party, and I take a secret joy seeing them so worried and upset. Yes, it's juvenile - but it takes one to know one, after all. I don't know if McCain/Palin will win, but I have a feeling that if they do, he'll drop off somewhere along the way and Palin will be running the country in his first term. Realistically, this could be horrible for the US, but it would be the stuff of an Orwellian novel - except that besides my own futuristic dystopian novel about a female dictator of the US, no one's ever allowed for the possibility. That would be another zinger I'd enjoy seeing delivered to the man party. But only in theory.
And so for the first time in my life, I am disengaged except as observer- and it would come at the time when we're being told that this is the most important election of our lifetime! I can see that - I just can't feel it. And I often wonder twenty years from now, when my grandchildren ask about the tumultuous aughts, how I will explain that I sat the dance out. Maybe I'll just tell them that I grew tired. That I'd invested my hopes in the 90s in Bill Clinton, that Sept. 11 changed our people and our country in ways that would forever haunt us, that my belief in our national character was chiseled away over eight years of watching us do nothing to stop our own capitalist/corporate state (has anyone stopped shopping?), that I filled my chalice of hope with dreams of the right woman at the right time for president, and that all the bullying in the world couldn't make me love a candidate that I just couldn't believe in, no matter how much his placards told me to do so. Yes, I am tired of the grandstanding, the idealism without action, and the suddenly narrow perspective of my fellow liberals - small tent coming your way. And since no one seems to be interested in my opinion anyway, I'll just cast my vote for Obama and laugh at my party bellyaching over the GOP not following the rules once again. You can't teach an old, dreamy dog new tricks, and after Clinton's impeachment, the 2000 and 2004 elections and this horrid war, the Dems are proving once again they have short memories and haven't yet learned how to stop letting the GOP distract them with shiny objects (read: Palin).
Obama is the first politician to take the high ground since Jimmy Carter - and I admire him for it. But we know what they did to Carter. And we know how the Dems are wont to cave to perceived public pressure and abandon their candidate. Here's hoping that Obama's wave of love is stronger than that - that this time will be different. After all, I may be cynical - based on experience - but I still have hope we'll one day be the people we say we are. I mean, I watch Star Trek reruns - what could be more hopeful for mankind than that?
