Hello, I've never "diaried" before. I'm not doing it now because I expect any kind of attention. It's just I'm 26 years old and I've never ended up becoming a bawling baby for the first time in my lifetime just by following a political scene so closely. Drove me to share.
The following is fairly pithy, it is just taken from my personal interaction journal. However, I will frame it by noting that I've never felt closer in build of mind to any human being quite the way I can with Barack Obama. I've carried out my life in strong uniformity to Obama's as a young (mixed-race) black male. I'm that kind of black guy who, without having been met, tend to get genuinely mistaken for a young white guy over the phone, without it ever being any particular kind of effort. I was just raised on the standard "white" enunciation. I enjoy rock and country music. I was quite gratified to see Obama using Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America" in part of his campaign, since I am a huge Brooks and Dunn fan etc.
Anyway, in the deeper ways... he is the ideal I see for an African-American, because it's the type of person I've always strived to be -- a post-racial one. Sensitive to issues pertaining to my race, but fair-minded throughout and not exclusionary to white culture.
So, the convention has been incredible to me. I wept intensely for a few minutes after watching Michelle and her brother's speeeches. The turmoil in my life might have something to do with the sudden break...that she penetrated the long dormant positive energy in my heart in a way little else has for several months. It felt like being alive in a period when other historical moments have taken place, like the Gettysburg Address, or "I Have a Dream," or FDR's first inaugural address.
She was minimalist in her narrative... she did not gloss over things leisurely as if they should just be able to explain themselves. Everything about her spirit was about hard work, and how hard work has always been known as the true American virture. Taking little and making a lot, and knowing when's enough. She's putting an end to the "welfare queen" smokescreen.
What an awesome thing to have been watching on TV...
Anyway, my spontaneous thoughts:
Oh my god...
I watched most of the events from today's opener of the Democratic National Convention...
Once Michelle Obama got on stage and spoke her speech... I couldn't control tears from strolling down my face as it went on.
After it was over, I spent five minutes crying. Could not stop crying. But it wasn't the usual kind of crying I'm accustomed to. I cried because I've never been so deeply moved by something performed for a political cause in my entire life.
I felt like I just experienced one of those moments that always carried the impersonal, detached context of "history" throughout my life. Those JFK assassination moments... those "I Have a Dream" moments... those "Four score and seven years ago" moments...
Something important is going on this year. And I'm feeling it.
I think I was so moved because, though I've always strongly related to Barack Obama's post-racial style, his background and the adversities he's triumphed over... It was never brought to the table in a way that just stabbed me right in the chest quite the way it could in the setting Michelle's speech was made in.
Her speech left me pulsating inside, "I wish Michelle Obama had been my mom."
My world has been shattered...poisoned with a toxicity I'm not even sure I'll ever recover from. But hearing the things she said... the organic meaning of "hope" has never resonated with me quite so deeply.
I am in awe.
I'm not sure I'll be able to stand it when Thursday comes.