2008 Presidential Election - The Day After

I am still reeling with the results of the presidential election. Excitement and hope are in the forefront of many emotions. As Oprah Winfrey’s tee shirt proclaimed, “HOPE WON.” Today is, indeed, a new day for America.

I have spend much of this day remembering the hope of John F. Kennedy and his dream of Camelot in 1960. I remember the feel of the steel, as I pulled the lever to vote for him, my first voting experience. The truth is that I couldn’t have voted for him in 1960. I was not yet 20, much less 21. I do know that my idealism and anticipation for an even greater future was real. When he was assassinated, I was devastated. We mourned his death as a nation, mostly united in the mourning process. A piece of my idealism fell away.

Then there was the assassination of his brother, Robert Kennedy. My husband and I had just turned on the 11 o’clock news to see how he was doing in the primary. What we saw was Kennedy falling to the ground and someone shouting, “He’s been shot!” Another chunk of idealism dropped off.

The murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the senseless beatings of protestors in the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war, and finally students being killed at Kent State by the National Guard took all but a small piece of my idealism.

During this period, there were reports of people who had been “detained” in Nevada for subversive political views. The final vestige of idealism fell by the wayside with the strange circumstances around the death of Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, attorney general under Richard Nixon. Are we living in a democracy or a police state.

From 1976 until the present, my cynicism grew like a cancer spreading to my politics and my religion. I am no longer religious, but I am spiritual, and, until last night, I had no patriotism. The very sight of the American flag turned my stomach because it had come to mean senseless killing. America went to war because of a lie. Long forgotten was John F. Kennedy’s “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

Today, I believe that the tide has turned and that we finally have a president who is calm and who acts, not reacts. For that, I am filled with gratitude.