. . . then this diary may not have anything new to say to you, although it may constitute a bittersweet walk along memory lane to the present day.
But if you're much younger than that -- well, it has always intrigued me to think about what life looks like, feels like, to those who live in a different skin than mine.
I'm not referring to skin color, just that anyone who lives outside my skin perceives life from a very different vantage point than my own, even if superfically our lives may appear very similar. My sister and I, for instance, once had a fascinating conversation about the incidental differences in our childhood experiences, growing up in the same household, that led her to love cold weather and me to hate it.
Last night in Granny Doc's diary, Angry Mouse and I had an exchange about differing generational perspectives (or maybe they didn't genuinely differ after all?) around what the Obama presidency represents. A later reader suggested that instead of allowing my contribution to that discussion to remain just a diary-length comment, I might want to make a respectable diary out of it.
Okay.
The Lead-Up:
Granny recounted her life as an activist by way of explaining why she's been a puddle of tears lately. She punctuated it with a Tip Jar::
For some of we Old Timers (546+ / 0-)
this is a moment that you Young Whippersnappers just can not fully appreciate. If you catch your Mother, or Father weeping, hug them for me.
Angry Mouse, who is a couple of decades younger than me, responded.
This young whippersnapper has to disagree. (8+ / 0-)
The first election I got to vote in was Clinton's re-election in 1996. It made me proud to vote and made me feel just dandy about the democratic process.
So the next election was a total shock to my system. And I think I've been in shock for eight years. I still get teary-eyed whenever I see or read any clip of news from the 2000 theft of our democracy.
So while I didn't march in the South, I can tell you that I am filled with relief and joy to once again have faith in our democratic process, just as I did when I cast my very first vote at 18.
Inspiring me to wax verbose:
**********************************************************************************
Imagine living in that wasteland for (12+ / 0-)
40 years instead of eight.
Imagine having the people you believed would lead your generation to this point assassinated, one after another.
Imagine if the President you believed in was killed. You're devastated, but you know he'd want you to go on fighting the good fight. So you do. You watch young men getting slaughtered in jungles on the other side of the world, and you watch both black and white people beaten and killed just for asking that all people be treated with human dignity. But you keep fighting through your tears, and you keep believing.
And after a few years of that, just when the world is maybe starting to make some sense again because civil rights are just barely starting to become reality, the leader of the civil rights movement is killed.
And then the brother of your slain president, himself a caring, charismatic leader, agrees to sacrifice his personal desires and seek the nomination. Imagine the hopes you'd be putting on him to help heal all this pain. Imagine your relief when it starts looking like he really will be nominated.
And then imagine that he, too, is killed, just a few months after the second assassination.
And imagine that Richard Nixon, author of the "Southern Strategy," the first President actually to be shamed out of office in our nation's history, becomes president instead.
Imagine how the part of you, deep inside, that knows how to hope, the part that knows how to believe, the part that wants to work to make those big dreams a reality, would finally wither and -- almost, but not quite -- die. How in some respects it would live on only as a set of shining but broken memories. Oh, you still fight the fight. Sometimes. But it's a lonely, angry, depressing, futile fight. And it only leads to deeper and deeper cynicism, stronger and stronger feelings of powerlessness as the country marches relentlessly further away from the ideals you hold dear.
Imagine what it would feel like to spend decades wishing that, someday, there might once again be a leader you could believe in, someone you thought could lead the country back on the path toward those dreams that you had dreamed so long ago.
Imagine that after 40 years in this desert -- 40. YEARS. -- finally that person shows up. The first time you hear him speak, you're thinking, WTF? And by the second or third time, plus a little internet research, you recognize him. Oh, my God -- he's the one you've been waiting for. For 40 years.
If you can imagine all that, then you'll have a clue what the older folks here are experiencing. But only a clue, because imagining it is not the same as living it.
**********************************************************************************
Angry Mouse, of course, posted an eloquent response that gave me an insight or two.
LAGNIAPPE:
I spent the weekend watching all the pre-Inaugural events, and was struck by how visibly We the People seemed to be in the process of taking our country back. Monday night, on Hardball, Bob Shrum echoed and articulated this feeling in what was truly a remarkable statement that perfectly captures how "something is happening here."
I think America is becoming more truly America right now than it has ever been before. It's . . . I didn't anticipate the total power of it: the sense people have -- and you'll get this if you run into folks in a store -- the sense people have that we really are fellow citizens. That it's not just a title; it's becoming a reality. And in that sense, this is one of the greatest days in American history.
Can I get an Amen?