OBAMARAMA

I try to avoid emotional involvement with politics--our country is far too big, and our politicians far too calculating to view the system with anything but an equally calculating frame of mind. So, although I have supported Obama throughout the election, I have never bought into the mania surrounding his candidacy; we now know where that kind of polarization can lead.
Despite this, I could not help but to be moved by his speech last night. Obama could have indulged his supporters with bestial egotism and cheap, irreverent celebration. He didn’t. He could have gripped Grant Park with a vague, sweeping glimpse of future utopias. He didn’t and, with this simple act, this refusal to give America anything but the solemn truth, a portrait of the challenges ahead, I saw something I had been previously reluctant to search for, and even more reluctant to find: hope
The word has worn thin with use over the past few months, and threatened to become nothing more than a cliché, but the eloquence of Obama’s address restored to it a newfound significance; hope does not mean blind faith. Hope does not mean an easy solution or instant gratification. Hope means having the foresight and the strength to stand together through the storm, to sacrifice a little now, so that, later, every one may receive a lot. It is not an easy virtue; it deals in uncomfortable shades of grey, missing the saccharine thrill of partisanship. BUT, it is necessary, and, last night, not only was Barack Obama brave enough to say this, but hundreds of thousands of people cheered in recognition of it. I watched the scene on my tiny television, sitting in the dim light of my kitchen, and could not help but cheer as well.

I'm sure the neighbors appreciated it.