Unusually political thoughts

It's hard not to get caught up in the euphoria of a victory for Obama. I had doubted that he could actually win in present day America. Still fresh for me is Bush's victory four years ago where his deceipt regarding the Twin Towers tragedy and the Irak war were already apparent at the time he was re-elected president. I became ashamed to be American and did everything to conceal this about myself here in Sweden.

It's hard to describe, then, the hope that I now feel. Maybe, just maybe, America is made up of more than just self-righteous power-hungry people steamrolling uncontrolled across the world leaving a path of environmental destruction and displaying a marked disdain for peoples too different from themselves (read Muslims). While the perception of an arrogant America holding the rest of the world in contempt may not fade quickly, the hope for change as promised by Obama is very real.

At the same time, I fear a repeat of Carter's legacy: a man of ideals and integrity who turned out to be hopelessly incapable in the political world, so much so that I couldn't bring myself to vote for him in 1980. I ended up not voting at all that year since I couldn't stomach the idea of voting for Reagan. I hope that Obama will prove to be a faster political learner than Carter was.

Otherwise, I'd have to go back to 1972 to find an election that has moved me as much as this one. Back then I was a teenager too young to vote, but not too young to be an avid McGovern supporter. My dear friend Sue Gochenaur and I would insolently sing "bye, bye miss American Pie" whenever we heard the national anthem in an attempt to distance ourselves from a Nixon-supporting United States. A feeling not unlike the present one for Bush. Past meets present.

And now for a sombering thought. The president of the United States is not actually Obama. It's George W. Bush. And while the celebrations of Obama's victory are going on, Bush is continuing on his path of inflicting as much damage on the environment as possible before making his exit. A set of new regulations is being pushed through to ease restrictions on pollutants among other things as I gleaned from the Washington Post. A better world will just have to wait.