[Colin, this is an expansion on my email to you this morning, so please excuse the repitition of content and metaphors]So, today I have been full of this nervous tension, all jittery with excitement, in a way that I haven't felt in such a long time that I'd forgotten that one can sometimes feel this way. I just can hardly wait for the results of the U.S. election. Whatever the outcome, I think I'm going to need some kind of post-election party to relieve my feelings. This is totally weird. I never get caught up in things like this; I've spent years purging that kind of impulse from my heart, making damn sure never to jump on bandwagons that history tells me have a close-to-one probability of crashing and burning, disbursing their disillusioned passengers into the wilderness to shake their heads and try to avoid meeting each other's sheepish gaze. I have cultivated an enjoyment of walking, in preference to being taken for a ride.
[Oh shite. I've just completely punched myself in the emotions, because this metaphor is reminding me of that scene in 'Lawrence of Arabia' where the Bedouin blow up a Turkish railway line in the middle of the desert, to stop supplies getting through. The train derails, and the Bedouin leap aboard to loot it. There's a bunch of dead people lying around, and there's this one guy, a passenger, late-middle-aged gentlemen with top hat and cane, who climbs off the train amidst the looting and shooting, and just sort of wanders off into the desert, upright and dignified, as though he were strolling in the park, but with a glazed look on his face and a strange shuffle to his step, clearly just kind of shutting down in response to the shock, the trauma. It's maybe 3 seconds' worth of screen time, but it's just doing me in, right now, thinking about the fact that he would have certainly died out there, in his confusion.]
Uh so anyway, it's totally unreasonable for me to be this excited. I don't get to vote for Obama, and in truth I'm not even all that clued-up about American politics. I'm well aware that what I'm feeling is very much of the bandwagon variety: I'm catching the enthusiasm of people around me, entranced by the vision of some kind of hope, while having not much idea how genuine the hope might be. That's the kind of thing
Republicans are supposed to be good at: putting forward a narrative that people can latch on to - people who don't have time to really understand the issues, but want someone and something to believe in. Liberals are supposed to be too cynical to fall for that kind of hype.
But part of the charm of the whole thing is that Obama's millions of fans seem so wonderfully self-aware. Everyone seems slightly embarassed about being enthusiastic about something, but are embracing it anyway, laughing at themselves as they bling themselves out with campaign merchandise that they wholeheartedly believe in. For a generation as jaded as ours, that's kind of huge. And that, as much as anything, is what grabs me. Imagine if our generation could actually have a rallying point, and feel some kind of togetherness! That's something we've never really had before, but the response to Obama seems to indicate that we're ripe for it, if someone will step up to the mark. It feels like there's so much goodwill out there, and growing awareness of the need for change, but the weight of humanity's past failures looms overhead so darkly that we're all afraid to hope that anything could work. Furthermore, we're deeply aware of our insignificance as individuals; we know that idealism won't be enough, and that at some level we're going to have to rely on people with power to create the world we want. Maybe Obama is capable of being such a leader; maybe not. But the possibility of it makes me go all tingly and I can barely sit still.
It is, of course, blindingly apparent in this election week that New Zealand lacks any such figurehead. It would be nice, some day, to feel some kind of excitement on polling day, to feel the thrill of democracy. Any West Wing fans out there? Here's a rather apt line from Leo, on why he joined Bartlet's campaign:
"Because I’m tired of it, year after year after year after year, having to chose between the lesser of who cares? Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly look at it. They say a good man can’t get elected President. I don’t believe that, do you?"
Ok, I'm going to have to stop now, because I'm totally uncomfortable with all this kind of language. I'm freaking myself out.
Anyway I don't even care. Really.
"...the Danes and the Swedes [are] probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And — even without belief in a God looming over them — they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.
