The United States of Cuba

 It's a sentimental thing, but I've chosen to vote on Election Day. II do this with  certain amount of confidence because I live in a state--Illinois--that has a Democratic Secretary of State and is pretty certain to go for Barack Obama. 

(Where I'm enthusiastic about my vote making a difference is in my still-very-red city, congressional district and state representational district. We have a chance of actually getting a Green Party City councilwoman--a terrific person.)

I can't contemplate tomorrow's election without remembering  2004, and how horrible it felt. I had convinced myself that I was right: that George Bush would be repudiated by the rest of the country. I had gone up to Madison, WI for a mammoth Kerry rally, and got my first taste of live Dave Grohl and live Bruce Springsteen, and I heard John Kerry speak. And I thought it could happen. We can fix this.

It may very well be that the re-election of George W. Bush was a Hinge of Fate moment, and I was unprepared to prognosticate something so big. It might also be that the Ohio vote was stolen, and I was right all along. But it seems more likely now, as it seemed in the aftermath, that history shifted in a big way--and that that election spelled the end of the post-WWII leadership of the United States of America. The rest of the world could understand how W got in--but could not understand how we re-elected him. And we acted not like a leader, but like a thug sitting in the leader's chair. No matter how much the rest of the world respected the American people and all that, there was no longer any assurance that it couldn't happen again. If we again move towards predominance, we will still not be where we were. What ever the 21st Century will be, it will not be an American Century. Not only have these plunderers destroyed trust in the United States, they've lost two wars, bankrupted the economy, and allowed a major city to be destroyed. 

Despite it all, I liked the idea of this great experimental country leading the world--but maybe that's a good thing, and maybe we need it if we're ever going to complete the process of making us a just nation. It felt like seeing the girl you loved with all the passion there was in the world marry a friend of yours, and go home from the wedding and lie on your bed staring up at the ceiling. Four years later, it's just as bad, but you have more of a sense of the way your life has to be.

And it's 'has to be' this time. We can become a second-string nation. How have we prospered as a nation? We killed the Indians and took their lands, and built a railroad or two and a bunch of robber barons to go with them, and that didn't make us great. We became great we accepted the people of the world--the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We started to become powerful when we became Irish--when we became Jews. When we became the world the rest of the world didn't want. We only really became culturally powerful when we accepted the genius of the Africans we brought as slaves--when we repudiated the cotton harvest and reaped Jazz and Rock and Roll. We became everybody's land of dreams when a bunch of Jews built Hollywood. And we were building a people. 

When we accepted the lesser we became greater. When we shared power we became powerful. When we gave away our money we grew rich. And when we admitted our ignorance we grew wise.

Nothing weird about that: any guy on a cross or under a bodhi-tree could tell you as much.

But to to those to whom a paradox is just a couple of physicians, it's all been insane. You're going to pollute america by letting in poor people! You're going to impoverish the nation by taking from the rich! And you're going to destroy our national power by acting like namby-pambies! Barack Obama is going to turn us into the United States of Cuba!

The thing they don't get is that we are the United States of Cuba. And the United States of Slovenia. And Kenya. And Anhwei, and Judaea. And the United States of Kurdistan, and Armenia, and Aztlan.  And it really is amazing how fast people who don't believe that can ruin everything.

All these countries are in peril. Barack Obama may not be enough to save them.

But we are.

Vote.