The night Barack Obama was elected president was the first night in at least a decade that I sang the national anthem. I used to sing it alone in the shower when I was in fourth grade, but this time I was with hundreds of revelers who had spontaneously converged on Union Square. I had never seen such collective mirth in the streets of New York City as I did that night.
Those present did not know what kind of gesture would appropriately express the happiness shared by so many. Then, a group of people started crowd surfing. My friend and I had never crowd surfed before, but decided that Obama’s election was as good a time as any to start. We were hoisted up and rode the wave euphoria shared by 69,456,897 people. Hunter S. Thompson wrote of another wave in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas–The Sixties: “There was a sense that what ever we were doing was right, that we were winning…we were riding the crest of a high, beautiful wave…” That is what 2008 felt like.
I have not sang the national anthem or crowd surfed since then, and the famed purple hue our country was supposed to take is out of fashion. Now, in 2010, the map of the United States is as red and blue as ever. To some it is alarmingly red, to others it is still too stubbornly blue around the edges.
But this is not new. Our country has a penchant for repeating itself; two years into Clinton’s first term the House of Representantives also went red. Contrary to 2008 when we thought the country was ideologically headed in a bright new direction, the country has voted to show that nothing has changed at all and the elections of 2008 remain an exception to the rule.
And that is why it was so celebrated. Together we defied the status quo, making it the most American election in a long time. It was, after all, a bunch of upstarts who signed the Declaration of Independence and challenged the status quo and sowed the seeds for this nation. These founding fathers set a standard: the more we challenge the status quo, the more genuinely American we actually become. So what does it mean now that America has decided to be staunchly status quo, expressing allegiance to one resounding word: ‘NO’? It means that we have become less American.
The great wave t hat Hunter S. Thompson spoke of did not last, but it has left its imprint in our collective memory. He wrote, “…you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark–that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Maybe 2008 is on its way to exist only in the realm of our collective memory. Maybe our wave is crashing. Or maybe this dream is not riding on a wave that crashes on its own volition. Maybe we are in some kind of vehicle, perhaps a red convertible–a Red Shark. In this vehicle we have agency, we are operating it, and whether it crashes or not depends on how we drive the thing.
This election, like most elections, was tainted by finger pointing and name-calling of the kind that you see amongst third graders in a school yard. The Red people and Blue people accusing the other of ignorance and stupidity. If each side is accusing the other of ineptitude then that makes all of us a bunch of idiots, which we are.
The problem with city and coastal dwellers is that they consistently disown the rest of the country. “What is there anyway?” Many New Yorkers ask me of the Midwest. Only once every couple of years does the Blue part of America pay attention to the rest of the country, only to accuse it of supreme ignorance after seeing election results. It is not strategic for the blue tinted peoples of the coasts to dismiss everyone in the middle as daft and insignificant and then expect them to vote in a manner that pleases them. When you disrespect someone it means you hold no hope in their ability to change and you already admit defeat.
It is also naive and illogical for the Red tinted middle of the country to think the Pandora’s box of problems that took eight years to unleash can be fixed in two years. It is even more naive and illogical to think that these problems can be fixed without their help. It is their country too, and it would be an act of treason to abandon a solution simply because they are not comfortable with it. The austerity measures of rationing food and oil in the early 1940s were probably not very comfortable, but absolutely necessary to win World War II. It was not comfortable for George Washington and his starving and sick to cross the Delaware river in the middle of winter, but by doing so they had a decisive victory. It was not comfortable for six year old Ruby Bridges to be harassed at school every day, but how long would it have taken for our schools to be desegregated if she hadn’t? If a child is willing to be uncomfortable for her country, why can’t adults willing to do the same? Being American isn’t about staying in your comfort zone. Imagine where the country would be today if the only vision our heroes had for our country was that of a comfortable way of life–if they said ‘NO’ to change.
I believe JFK said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I think some people are confused. They are waiting to see what the country will do for them. Perhaps they have forgotten that by living in and taking space in this country they also have to be willing to contribute to it. The word NO has never done anything for anyone, and neither has finger pointing.
Whatever it is we started riding in 2008 does not have to stop, but the current attitudes do so that together we can continue with a resounding YES. It is only then that we can start acting like proper Americans again.
you’ve capture the american zeitgeist, and good use of hunter s. thompson quotes!