Change again

Is it just me, or is there something oddly Reagan-like in the feeling of political/cultural sea change that accompanied Obama's win Tuesday? It's not just the consonance of "new day" and "morning in America." As others have said, Obama is a transformational figure in our nation's politics. I take this to mean more than the fact that he appeals to a new generation of voters. The welcome participation of young voters is, in itself, a boon to democracy to be sure, but along with their coming to the (pun alert) party came something else.

I think that's why pronouncements about the "liberal agenda" and "conservative core values" from both the left and the right haven't made much sense over the past week. The constellations of ideas associated with the words "liberal" and "conservative" for the past 30 years or so are realigning. The referents of the words have begun to reform in novel associations of values and goals, as old ideologies about race relations, free market capitalism, the mutual responsibilities of the individual to the community, and the role of religion in public discourse come apart. This is why Obama beat Clinton in the Democratic nomination process: his approach to the nation's challenges recognizes what is going on in the ways we have begun to re-imagine the usefulness of possible solutions apart from ideology. She speaks an aging language. He's developing a new one.

Obama had the foresight to recognize early on what he called "the arc of history" in his victory speech, but the change is not in his vision alone. America has begun to reform its worldview in terms of pragmatic imaginings of the future. The old ideologies unraveled long before Alan Greenspan admitted before Congress his "shock" that he had been wrong in a fundamental assumption about the nature of the economy.

Change.gov

Wanna see something really lovely? Point your browser here: http://www.change.gov/

It's loading slow as a two-year campaign this afternoon, but it's up and running already.

Changes

I was born in the Deep South near the middle of the last century. Racism was the norm in the segregated culture of my childhood. The doctor’s office had a “colored” waiting room. The drugstore was segregated. So were drinking fountains.

I remember the segregated swimming pool, the segregated movie theater, a segregated amusement park. Unspoken, but always everywhere was the dominant belief that the races were so different that they must be kept from one another. Blackness was irreducibly other.

Our family moved to suburban Dallas in 1959 where I attended segregated schools till my graduation in the late 60s. The school district wasn’t officially segregated, mind you. Brown v Board of Education held separate schools unjust and unequal back in 1954. We had “neighborhood schools” which just happened to be either all white or all black. Nothing was said about the segregated neighborhoods.

I spent several weeks each summer of my childhood with my grandparents in a small town outside Baton Rouge. This was during the Civil Rights struggle. I remember arguments about Freedom Riders “stirring up trouble” and rumors of race-motivated beatings and efforts to suppress voting rights. The arguments were based on premises like states’ rights and “preserving our way of life.” I remember when the local public swimming pool closed rather than obey a court order to desegregate. I remember James Meredith being admitted to Ole Miss. I remember CORE and SNCC. I remember finding Klan leaflets on the street and George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama.



And yesterday I voted for the son of a man from Kenya and a woman from Kansas to be president. My state went against Obama, but my vote was counted as part of his national majority. I am one of more than 52 million Americans responsible for electing the right man, and it just so happens that he's an African American.

How much has the world changed during my life. How grateful I am to have witnessed its changing.



Of course, he's also all American.

Not 2004

The night of the last presidential election I watched coverage of the returns late into the wee hours. When CNN reported that Ohio voters in late-reporting precincts said they were voting on social issues like gay marriage, I knew it was lost and went to bed. Next morning I picked up the first of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels. The times were not with me, and the Napoleonic Wars seemed like a safe place to visit for a while. I read them all over the next weeks. All 20 or so of them.

Tonight when the news broke that Obama had enough electoral votes to win, my wife cried. It was joy behind her tears.

Tonight my daughter in Austin texted me "We did it!" "333 electoral votes and counting!" I replied. A few moments later she shot back "Landslide! History live on MSNBC."

Tonight when Obama began his victory speech, my wife cried again. Cried along with Jesse Jackson and many others on TV.

My daughter was born almost 25 years ago in Terre Haute, IN. She's of the generation that ushered in this change. Earlier tonight, I read that Vigo County, IN (Terre Haute's county) got the presidential election right every election but two since 1892. Vigo County (and my daughter) got it right again tonight.

Anything I read this week, I'll read for joy, not escape.

Just voted

Lines and long waits are being reported in other places. Not here. I was in and out in minutes.

Obama video

Got a couple of robo calls today. I just got an email from David Byrne urging me to vote tomorrow. It's what I deserve for downloading that free tune from his Web site last month, I guess.

The Paul Simon video above has been running tonight on CNN and MSNBC with some frequency.

Tomorrow night we can all breathe again.

Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel died yesterday. He was important in so many ways, but today I'm thinking of a vinyl recording of the Congolese mass, Missa Luba I used to own. Terkel wrote the liner notes. In his memory, here's the Sanctus from Missa Luba: