Like many of you, I'm a Gen-Xer. I'm supposed be a cynical bastard, tuned out and too cool for sincerity. And for most of my life, I have been. Like most of my friends, I spent my teen and college years with three goals: 1)be in a band 2)get really high and 3)hate everything.
But gradually, over the last several years, something has been happening to me. Maybe it's a sort of late maturity--though I doubt it. I think it started to bubble up after Paul Wellstone died and Republicans stood up en masse in protest of his memorial service and elected his sleazy opponent, Norm Coleman, defeating poor Mondale, and the Swiftboaters won, and the Creation Musuemwas born, and Roberts and Alioto joined the Supreme Court, and the VP told a US Senator to go fuck himself...you get the idea.
And that thing kept bubbling and bubbling until it spilled over in a fountain of rage and fear and despair and suddenly, all the cynicism in the world won't mop it up. And though I feel like a lameass saying it, Barack Obama and his message of hope and unity suddenly seem like the only thing in the world that can save us...
Read More