Forgive me if I seem a bit tired: I fell asleep in front of the TV, and imagined waking up to an incredible scene.
The President of the United States was giving a press conference, but I must have imagined it: he was clearly the smartest guy in the room, if not in the larger audience. He answered each question thoughtfully and with nuance, without necessarily accepting the assumptions and premises behind the question.
Most of his statements were so intricately crafted that I won't try to reproduce them here -- like most dreams, the details evaporate when we try hardest to recall them -- but here is one thing he said that convinced me I was dreaming:
"Not everything we do is going to work out exactly as we intended it to work out."
No fucking way.
Self-awareness, and an honest acceptance of fallibility? I must be dreaming.
I tried desperately to wake up from the 2000 election, only to find our nation embarked on an eight-year waking horror. I saw towers fall while heroes die climbing them, knocked over as much by Presidential indifference and ignorance as by the murderers who hijacked the planes, and I couldn't seem to wake up from that. I watched my kid drive a tank to Baghdad -- live on CNN! -- pursuing a neoconservative fantasy, desperately hoping that it was only a nightmare, but (like his worst PTSD nightmares) it was all too real.
I have only one favor to ask you, fellow Kossacks:
If this is a dream... DON'T WAKE ME UP.