I began glancing at the NY Times op ed page and realized that right now there is a cornucopia of superb writing, of writers well known and not quite so well known striving to express the rich meaning of what we have just accomplished.
What we have accomplished. That is what Obama has told us has to happen. That change has to come from the bottom up.
I thought perhaps I would take a brief shot at my own version of offerings from pundits.
Not just wellknown pundits. Ordinary people as well, demonstrating their insight.
I invite you to keep reading.
the final three paragraphs of a superb piece by Nicholas Kristof entitled The Obama Dividend:
Whatever the next step, it’s worth savoring this historic vista. First, look backward at a long-forgotten horror. In 1958, a little white girl in North Carolina innocently kissed a 9-year-old black friend named Hanover on the cheek. The police arrested the boy, along with his 7-year-old companion, and a court sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment for attempted rape. (After publicity, the boy was eventually released.)
Considering that past, perhaps the most incisive comment on Mr. Obama’s election actually came long ago. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature in 1959, two years before Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks but "to free the soul of America."
Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: "Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was."
From Roger Cohen's Perfecting the Union, the beginning:
Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental at stake in this U.S. election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people.
and this:
Obama made a simple bet and stuck to it. If you trusted in the fundamental decency, civility and good sense of the American people, even at the end of a season of fear and loss, you could forge a new politics and win the day.
and also this:
And what stronger emblem could be offered to the world of an American renewal startling enough to challenge the assumptions of every state on earth?
The other day I got an e-mail message saying simply this: Rosa Parks sat in 1955. Martin Luther King walked in 1963. Barack Obama ran in 2008. That our children might fly.
Tough days lie ahead. But it’s a moment to dream. Americans have earned that right, along with the renewed respect of the world.
The Queen of Snark, MoDo, offers Bring on the Puppy and the Rookie, which concludes:
Promising to also be president for those who opposed him, Obama quoted Lincoln, his political idol and the man who ended slavery: "We are not enemies, but friends — though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection."
There have been many awful mistakes made in this country. But now we have another chance.
As we start fresh with a constitutional law professor and senator from the Land of Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial might be getting its gleam back.
I may have to celebrate by going over there and climbing up into Abe’s lap.
It’s a $50 fine. But it’d be worth it.
Gail Collins concludes her Thinking of Good Vibrations thusly :
Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore. It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents, one of whom is George W. Bush. Bummer.
The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House.
We’ll settle for that.
Here I inject the hearty amen of another baby boomer who already sees his students starting to accept the idea that they can be anything.
From the letters on Obama, History and the Task Ahead in the NYTimes, we read from Rose Wilson of Ann Arbor
We face immense difficulties — difficulties economic, political and moral. Mr. Obama does not have a magic wand he can wave and rid us of our problems. We Americans are not children to be rescued but rather partners who must share in the sacrifices to come.
and from Eli Greenbaum of Bloomfield Hills, MI:
I went to bed feeling comfortable, secure, proud and — for the first time in a long time — optimistic. I woke up later than usual to a metaphoric bright sun and blue skies.
I believe that there is hope in the air and that we are moving toward a united United States.
and James Adler of Cambridge MA offers:
It does nothing less for me than heal my chronic young boyhood wound of Nov. 22, 1963. And also the wounds of Bobby and Martin. Only now, half a lifetime later, can I account for the depth of my emotion only by the feeling in my gut that these ancient sadnesses and wounds, which I thought would be part of me forever, finally, in this new beginning time, have been healed.
and from Paris, Gary Lee Kraut writes
The last time an event in the United States elicited such good will throughout much of the world was Sept. 11, 2001. May our president lead in such a way that maintains that good will this time so that it may earn us honorable and long-term dividends.
This is from one paper, in one day. As I glance at other papers around the nation, I find similar patterns: of professional writers seeking to offer words to help explore the meaning of the occasion, of editorials and op eds, and of the words offered by the readers, the "ordinary" who offer extraordinary expression for this extraordinary time.
The emotions we saw explode at 11 PM Eastern Time when what had been obvious became explicit and official is only part of what has happened. The outbursts and expressions were not only here in America but around the world. We see it in the newspaper headlines and in the exuberance of the people in the crowds, the combination of unbridled happiness, explosive joy, overwhelming relief that such a day has actually happened.
Something has been unleashed around the world and within millions of human hearts and souls. Those who participated in the campaign began to experience it in themselves. Call it possibilities: of restoration, of hope. It has a contagion that is unbelievable. Giddiness becomes intertwined with the sobriety of what it all might mean.
MIGHT MEAN - Hope provides opportunity. It does not guarantee success. Bill Clinton used to be fond of quoting a line from Proverbs, that "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Vision is only possible if one has the hope of a world and an experience different than where one stands. It has meaning in the hope that it can be achieved resulting in a world transformed, because the people who strive for that vision are themselves transformed.
I began with the idea of words that were extraordinary, from people for whom words are their business and those who have been inspired to aspire to offer their own.
Each of us may find ourselves moved to offer our words, in the hope that they will carry meaning, express at least in part a vision to which we now attach and commit ourselves, to an America and a world that is richer, more full of possibilities for an immensely wider range of people.
Words have the power to inspire. If we have learned nothing else from this campaign, it should be that. It is never "just words" any more that simple human kindness is an ordinary act. Like all acts, those of kindness are extraordinary. As all people are, at least potentially, themselves extraordinary, capable of incredible things. First one has to believe, to have vision.
That is why I am a teacher - to help my students have that belief in and vision about themselves.
It is also why I write - in the hope that my fumbled connections of words perhaps may in someone else unlock a power in them that will connect them with what a former president once dismissed as the vision thing.
It is perhaps why my beloved wife, herself a gifted writer, far more precise and careful in her use of the written word than I will ever be, was able to understand immediately upon hearing Obama live in Richmond in 2007 why he should be president.
Yes, like many she had been thrilled by his speech in Boston at the Convention. But it was more. I have known her for more than three decades. This is the first political candidate at any level to whom she gave money, for whom she made phone calls, on whose behalf she was willing to overcome her well-established reserve and broach conversations with people she barely knew. It has been empowering to her.
And it has been empowering to my students as it has to people young and not so young around the world.
Look around and see what has been unleashed. Think of the possibilities. And remember how much words have to do with all this. Yes, there is the man himself, his extraordinary story, his discipline and his intellect, his generosity and his commitment.
The real story is what that has inspired. As the few examples from one paper that I have offered illustrate.
Walk gladly across the earth, answering that of God in each man you encounter. So wrote George Fox, the 17th Century Englishman credited with founding the Religious Society of Friends - the Quakers. If we can see capacities for love and generosity in ourselves, then we will seek to affirm it in others, and in that fashion we can help to heal a broken society and a shattered world. The words we now find expressed by ourselves and others are an indication of what may now have been unleashed.
Offer your words. But remember. Words are important. They inspire, challenge, explain. Their power comes from when they transform.
And that transformation has to be part of each of us.
Peace