I read a Daily Kos diary today and then noticed the picture show at its end. I thought I would just glance at it. Then I stayed, mesmerized.
I am a hard-headed, practical, realistic, let's-just-get-the-right-guys-elected sort of guy. None of this emotional stuff for me. Been there; done that; that's where I was in my 20s, not now.
But I could not take my eyes off that sequence of pictures of Obama, Michelle, babies, seniors, at the bottom of the Diary. Can you peer into someone's face and see goodness? Is it not all just about policy positions after all? Do leadership and charisma and dreams and hope actually make a difference -- not only to the unwashed masses, but even to me? Nah, couldn't be. Not me. I am hard-headed, practical, realistic -- even cynical.
Or not. As I looked at those picturesI found myself slipping back into the idealism of my 20s, or maybe my teens. I felt myself slipping back into the early 1960s, or maybe the late 1950s. In that Kos slide show, the America that was comfortably seen through the innocence of my youth has not gone away --
-- that America of ice cream cones and young women in shirtwaists and Father Knows Best --
-- that America of the Kingston Trio and the Beatles --
-- not even after the police dogs and the firehoses and the little Vietnamese girl running toward camera and the burning monks and the students being chased through the streets of Chicago and the other ones shot dead at Kent State --
-- not even after the creepy conversations of a President caught on his own tapes and more recently the politicians caught on their own text messages --
-- not even after the bombs and the lies and the flooded homes and the cynical snicker that Jon Stewart captures so well.
That warm and hopeful America of my youth has not gone away.
It has simply changed a little. And it has stayed the same. Some colors have changed. Some accents have changed. Mother knows best also, and is now also a CEO or trial lawyer. Some genders and orientations and ethnicities and life experiences have been added to the mix that we once called a melting pot and we now know is stew pot, with more and more rich flavors intermingling.
But it's still the America of my youth.
The America of 50 years ago.
Only better.