yesterday was inauguration day, which was nice and inspiring and empowering blah blah blah. parts of it really were. but i can't help being suspicious. obama is just a human being, after all; but somehow in the course of the campaign, he became a symbol as well of hope and change and so on... all sorts of abstract nouns that nobody really bothered to define. which i understand for the sake of rhetoric, but how is that actually going to be converted into policy? i'm not anti-obama by any means, i'm just very wary of how much symbolic baggage he's now carrying, and which i am not sure as the actual president he will be able to continue carrying without fail. not out of any particular flaw of his own, but just the fact that nobody can live up to those expectations.
on the colbert report, the interviewee repeated a catchy-sounding concept of 'choosing our own history.' which is all very well, up to a point. given how incredibly tied up the american political economy is with the rest of the world, however, i think we first have to acknowledge the history that is actually there, in both our relationships with other nations and the history of those nations themselves, to be able to function. and more has to be done than the blanket statement 'not everything we've done has been the greatest.' the world is going to change on specifics.
i guess what really unsettles me is the sense of self-congratulation that seems to be going around, the unspoken attitude, 'we elected obama, we've done our part for 'change' ' (whatever that means). people keep going on about how his election represents 'how anyone can become president' and 'american finally got enough past race to elect a black man,' embracing these generalizations rather than looking at the specifics. obama is an extraordinarily skilled speaker and politician, having worked his way through many levels of high education; he's not just 'anyone.' if anything, george w bush was greater proof of 'anyone can become president' simply because he was so very mediocre in his credentials; 'anyone can become president, given the right connections and sufficient funds.' and then there's the racial issue: obama's not black, he's biracial. if we are going to continue labeling people due to their genetic heritage, we might as well be completely accurate about it, or finally admit that the word 'black' in regards to race really applies neither to genealogy nor culture; it's a myth, just like 'whiteness,' that we continue to allow to influence our lives. as for the self-satisfaction... the majority of americans who voted just fulfilled their civic responsibility by choosing the better candidate of the two. that's what voting essentially is for. doing it correctly isn't an exceptional virtue; it's a necessity for a democratic society. i'm scared too many people will think that they are off the hook for trying to fix the problems our nation faces because they 'voted for change,' and as such whatever improvements obama might attempt will fail because the public who voted for change will end up not actually wanting to do the work of changing. and then of course obama as the symbol will get the blame.
enough of this, i guess. it's a historic occasion, and for once the good kind of historic. i just hope it doesn't become fodder for a nationalistic circle-jerk, as we celebrate what we have not yet done.
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