Home sweet home
I lived overseas for a total of two years during the Bush administrations. While my desire to live outside the US was mostly due to personal curiosity and adventurousness, my distaste for Bush and his policies made it easier to be far away. I felt disaffected as an American: my government had become a grotesque version of what I had been taught in 8th-grade civics class.
Only once during those two years did I long to be in America: in the spring of 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. At the time I was an intern at a war crimes tribunal, and my daily news diet consisted mostly of genocide and Bush's war in Iraq. Sometimes my only refuge was to read the euphoric news reports from San Francisco, and put on my headphones and listen to Burt Bacharach sing What the World Needs Now.
But on 4 November 2008, I was proud to be on American soil. I even feel a little sorry for my American friends overseas; I wish they could be here to share this feeling.
Barack Obama has promised a great deal - almost certainly more than any single administration can deliver. But he has also returned something priceless to the American people: our pride, and our optimism.
4 comments:
I think Obama is a visionary leader - most people see that. I think he'll need great people, all of us, to succeed in changing the world. Lord knows we need to end the opression and "selfishness" of the past leaders.
I have a bumper sticker I bought on a visit to Vermont, that I have been "dying" to use but never could. (It won't show up on my dark car). My next car will be a very small white one, and I can hardly wait to put the sticker on the bumper. It has a globe, and the very simple words that say,"We're all in this together". Hopefully, this is what Barack Obama will help us achieve.
From all accounts, Americans overseas are enjoying the delight of the global community. We are representatives again of hope and have been redeemed- at least in the moment- for this amazing leap forward.
For the past week, I have been in a perpetual state of being verklempt. [The New York Times has now become capable of reducing me to tears with their incredible editorials.] I am so proud of my country, so full of joy that we will have a true statesman at the helm, and thrilled the White House pressers will now feature complete sentences with formed thoughts.
I don't want to get ahead of myself here but wouldn't it be logical for history to eventually write that Obama will have been one of the best, most important, and most cherished of presidents?
Brickgrrl - I certainly hope so.
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