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© 2008 Joe Conat

As the sun climbs higher into a bright blue Michigan sky this fine November morning, I am compelled, at long last, to write again for You’ll All Pay.

Last night, along with everybody else in the country I imagine, I watched history aborning as Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States and this nation’s first African American president.

I felt as though someone had lifted a mill-wheel from my shoulders.

In 2000 I watched in bafflement and outrage as President George W. Bush stole…I will maintain that ‘til my dying day, he stole…that year’s presidential election. In 2004 I raged and gnashed my teeth in crushing disappointment in my fellow Americans…how could they re-elect that patently moronic shitheel?!…and then slumped in resignation and despair.

In 2008 I watched something else entirely.

I remained very aloof during this election. Oh, I wanted Obama to win, I wanted it very badly…but I was superstitious by this point. I had desperately wanted Gore to win…and he lost. I had desperately wanted Bush to lose in 2004…okay, I admit it, I didn’t vote for Kerry so much as I voted against Bush…and Bush won. Fate seemed to conspire to ruinously crush my most fervent political hopes. Crush them, grind them into the dirt, spit on their neck and call them funny names.

I watched, dead-eyed, as Bush’s administration went crazier and crazier. I watched as the economy tanked, our standing in the world slid into the crapper and our men and women killed and died overseas in a seemingly never-ending and increasingly pointless crusade against shadows.

I stared, bleak, at Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate. I shook my head and averted my eyes from the rabid response to her insane near-jingoistic rhetoric, her hate-speech wrapped in a flag and a campaign poster.

I drew funny pictures of rabbits until I couldn’t even bring myself to do that anymore.

I refused to credit polls, even…perhaps, especially…if they said what I wanted to hear. I wouldn’t be gut-punched again.

Over the past eight years I have watched as people who were unqualified, evil or both ascended to the highest seats of power in the land. I have watched them gleefully take advantage of the worst attack in the history of America to justify torture, domestic spying and an insane invasion. They used the pretense of this attack to declare anyone who opposed them “unpatriotic” and they ignored, defied or outright mocked the very Constitution on which this country is founded.

I was one of those people out there who doubted that America is a place where all things are possible, who wondered if the dreams of our founding fathers was still alive in our time, who questioned the power of our democracy.

I didn’t dare hope, not even a little.

Not until last night.

We invited friends over. Comfort in number, perhaps. There was beer and jollity and me constantly flipping between news channels, sprinting back and forth between the TV and the computer to check for updates on NBC.com or Associated Press.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

There were moments of tension, of course. For the longest time it seemed that Obama hovered at 207 as McCain made gains, jumping from the 70s to the 100s to the 130s…something in me tightened up and prepared to suffer the blows of disappointment again.

Our friends went home around 10:45 or so. The beer was gone, the tension had gone from electrifying to stultifying, they were tired, we all had to work in the morning.

I wasn’t about to go to bed. I’d stay up til dawn if I needed to. Pensive, aloof, not daring to really hope.

I had flipped to the Daily Show’s special coverage. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert joshing each other. And suddenly Jon Stewart says:

“At 11 pm, eastern time…the president of the United States is Barack Obama.”

Wha-huh?

I mean…it’s the Daily Show. Jon was just messing with Stephen, right? Could it…it’s so early, it can’t…could it…?

Every network I flipped to. CNN. NBC. ABC.

Aims, my beloved wife, was “resting her eyes” on the couch beside me. I shook her.

“They called it!” my voice an excited, awe-filled whisper. “Honey. They called it. It happened.”
We watched McCain’s concession speech and remarked on his surprising graciousness. We snarled and hooted at Palin and her glazed smile.

Aimee jumped online to celebrate with friends in cyberspace. I watched TV for a while and went to bed.

We watched Obama’s speech upstairs, on the bedroom TV. I held Aims’ hand as she wept.
I could only lay, stunned but…

…but…

…happy.

President-elect Obama told an inspiring story about Ann Nixon Cooper, a 106 year old black woman who saw the best and worst of the 20th century. She saw the highs and lows, the miracles and catastrophes and yesterday she got to vote for a black man to hold the highest position in the country, possibly the world. And damn if he didn’t actually win.

He asked if his daughters lived to be as old as Ann Nixon Cooper what changes and progress would they witness? What miracles await them?

And I thought of my daughter, asleep in her bed downstairs, safe and snuggled up and dreaming, unaware of the awesome and terrible, wondrous and frightening, fantastic and horrible future that lies ahead of her.

I thought back on the history I have witnessed, much of it bad: Nixon’s disgrace of the Oval Office; Challenger; Columbia; 9/11. But…the Berlin Wall came down. We landed machines on Mars. We can speak across the globe in picoseconds and on my desk is more processing power and access than anybody ever had in the whole of history.

And last night, the first African American was elected President of the United States.

But that, to me, isn’t the miracle. It’s that we, as a nation, turned our backs on the power-mongers and cheaters, the thieves and liars and embraced hope.

I thought of my daughter down in her bed and how, before I came up to see President Obama speak, I tiptoed into her bedroom, wrapped my arms around her sleeping form and whispered in her ear “It might just be okay, now.”

Might it? Is the future brighter? Can we, perhaps, dare to breathe a little, loosen our cynicism, open ourselves up to the possibility of hope?

“Yes we can.” - President Barack Obama, November 4, 2008.