At 9:36 Eastern Standard Time, on November 4th, the year 2008 of the Common Era, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America.
Hold on a second, I need to read that again.
…Okay. Okay, I think I’m okay.
I’m only 20 years old, and for nearly all my life I have had no hope. Or rather, I’ve had very little hope. I grew up in a world that was not on the brink of annihilation like my parents and grandparents before me, but there was still an insidious feeling underlying my culture and society. The feeling that we as a species were sloughing into a benighted dark age, that madness and mediocrity held sway and were choking to death what little light had been kindled these last 100 plus years. The world was ending, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, not with a bang, but a drawn out and pitiful whimper.
Tonight was the first time I can ever remember not having that feeling. I looked out the window of the office I had been cleaning (by the by, I’m working as a janitor at UT Knoxville. Go me!) and saw little knots of students chanting “O-BA-MA!” and celebrating the beginnings of a new age in America, and I felt the same spirit. It’s nice to actually be proud of one’s country. Perhaps it’s not a long, slow slide to the fall. Maybe there’s spirit left in the old civilization after all. Maybe the days have not gone down in the West.
Forgive me, I’m waxing poetic.
You know, a lot can still go wrong. He could wind up being a complete fuck-up of a president. He could be milquetoast. He could still, gods forbid, be killed (and if that happens, that’s it, game over. The streets will run red. Mark my words.) The long and difficult work is now ahead of us to take this golden opportunity and make it into solid positive reality.
But for right now, I am savoring the feeling, basking if you will, of this moment.
For the first time in my life I looked around me and realized, “Holy shit, this is the 21st century.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that we are now in the motherfucking future. Act accordingly.
