Crazy Angels

It's a rare moment when you get to see real history playing out across the pixels of your television screen. This night was one. The junior senator from Illinois has accomplished the impossible, and the nation has moved into a new era. There are some good things about this, many of them emotional and psychological. Finally, our fellow Americans with dark skin have received the affirmation they have needed for a very long time. There's nothing wrong with that. In the long run, it will make life better and healthier in our communities. Perhaps a large segment of our young people will stop destroying themselves and begin to realize that there are good possibilities for their lives. It's hard to feel bad about that.

I can't help but believe that the genius of America has shown itself again: we have done the unexpected. Our Democracy has surprised us. Our crazy angels have carried the day.

I'm not wild about Obama. I wasn't wild about McCain either. Obama has set the expectations very high, and if history is any measure, such messianic hopes as inspired by Obama are doomed to disappointment. I remember the campaign of Bill Clinton and all of the lofty promises he made. I also remember how few of those promises were fulfilled. I notice that the pundits are already drawing comparisons between Clinton and Obama, and promising how Obama isn't going to make the same "mistakes" that Clinton did. But, when you pin hopes as high as Obama has, disappointments are inevitable. How long before they set in, and a whole new generation of voters is cursed with the same cynicism that has infected us?

I feel like I have a migraine coming on. This election thing has been going on for so long and I have been so focused on it, that my brain doesn’t seem to know what to do or how to turn itself off. Emptiness. I bought a new computer today. Tomorrow morning, I will drag myself out of bed and resume planning how I will migrate all of my software and files to a new box. I will be scanning the web for a sense of how things are going. I will do my work and all of the other ordinary things I did yesterday. Not much will be changed for me.