Friday, September 5, 2008

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

    I can't believe how bad I am at keeping a blog. I shouldn't be surprised, really -- it's always been this way when it comes to me doing anything long term. By long term, of course, I mean anything that takes longer than Right Now. When I was younger my room used to be full of all these great looking journals, gifts from parents and aunts and uncles, mementos from museums in distant cities, and they all had about one or two incredible entries -- and that was it. Only now do I realize that I was really writing the same first chapter to the same novel, over and over again, disguised as my own voice. 
    So I guess that's why I'm doing this -- kind of like I wrote earlier: just to see if I can. Can I start something that doesn't necessarily end? Or at least, doesn't necessarily end in rapturous applause? I've already beaten my own expectations -- see, the question used to be, Can I start?
    Yes. Yes I can.
    Yes we can. I have such strong, mixed feelings about Obama. (As George Carlin (R.I.P.) would've said, "I don't do transitions".) On one hand, I'm thrilled by the man. His presence, his politics -- that he actually has beliefs, and ideas, and real PLANS for how to make them realities. I have the rabid stage five Beatlemania fandom disease that you can only understand if you've had a Bush or Clinton in the White House since the day you were born. Think about it. Follow me...
   You know the way brand names become accepted nouns? For instance, once upon a time there was "tissue paper". And now? Well, now we have "Kleenex". So kids growing up, eventually, won't ask for a tissue, they'll ask for kleenex -- maybe even A kleenex -- and that'll be that. This is what the American presidency is for me. If people were to ask me to hand them a president, I'd hand them a Bush or a Clinton. I've never known the position -- the product, in this analogy -- to be removed from the people that, in so many words, OWN it.
    Obama doesn't own the presidency; despite all the "inexperienced" bullshit the talking heads spew, I believe he's earned it. Why? Here's a big one: Sometimes, the man writes his own speeches. Stop right there. He sits down, thinks for a while, and writes language that can move millions of Americans -- young Americans, no less -- into political action? After our country's been run (into the ground) by the human equivalent of a kleenex for the past eight years? Really?
    I'm sold.
    However, I say my feelings are mixed because - what do I know? Is Obama really the politician I think he is -- someone with relatively few political ties, a true humanist, with the ability to write poetry and execute carefully laid plains? I just dunno...he could be someone different at a time in my life -- apparently, my entire generation's collective life -- when I'm just desperate for ANYTHING different. Fuck "Change I Can Believe In" -- how about just Change?
    That's more than I've seen in twenty years. Aside from the obvious, how do I know Washington's been a phantom limb, too sidetracked by its own selfish ideals, for my entire lifetime? Because at least with change, when something goes dreadfully wrong, it's a surprise -- it's unexpected because it's new, even if it's catastrophic. On the other hand, with the same tired politics, the same divisive cultural pandering...I mean 1300 foreclosures a day. In California alone. And We Saw This Coming. Shit. Then again, if you don't vote for someone who stands for change --  even if he's just that: just a symbol for something different -- then at least you can say you saw it coming when those biblical waves arrive and bleed our two countries into one big, red-and-blue mess.
    If it hasn't happened already.
    

2 comments:

erin said...

w,

we have the same thoughts.

e

JS said...

Just saw Clinton on the Daily Show last night and was blown away by what he would have done financially if he'd continued to be the president. Invest in renewables rather than construction and the taxpayers would have kept growing the surplus rather than the Bush using our pockets as his cash machine...

Obama is listening to Clinton, being advised by him, the Clintons will have a place in the new Obama cabinet/leadership.

Thanks for getting this thread going...