Do You Believe In Miracles?

Four years ago, with the specter of the most totalitarian regime in American history keeping its lock on the White House, I was a very manic, paranoid, and angry person. Fortunately, it turned out W. Bush was more of a lazy oaf who just enjoyed winning elections more than he truly believed in what he preached and what was preached on his behalf (though the effects of what he has done on the down low in terms of our rights and freedoms is something that has to be carefully examined in the coming years). For all my screaming and ranting of "DIE NAZIS DIE!", the great Right Wing Balloon just sort of had its air taken out by its own ineptitude. And at the same time, with the breath of distance, I looked at some of my more extreme leftist cohorts and had to take a step away from their even more manic attitudes.

So comes Obama. Suddenly, the raging anti-intellectualism of the decade is made moot. Suddenly, sound judgment, temperament, rationality, reason, all that good stuff, was made acceptable again. While I don't really regret the rage I felt towards the Right Wing in 2004, I do regret not having the grace and composure of Barack Obama.

And while I do still champion progressive, dare I even say "liberal", ideas, I am more infused with the practical realism that Obama brings to the table. To be uncompromising in our ideals, but practical in our application, is as stable and correct one can be in governance, politics, and society. And also, a little dose of "get a grip" is a healthy thing. Now when my like-minded patriots on the left scream "It'll be fascism if McCain wins!", I know better.

John McCain shamed himself with his campaign in the last couple months but I won't hold it against him, in part because - should he indeed lose on Election Day - I assume he will go back to being John McCain of years past, and he will have a spot at the table in the new Washington that Obama will attempt to forge.

I amaze myself that I have consistently avoided a personal repeat of 2004. I don't find myself screaming at the people at the McCain rallies. And even with all the anecdotal and statistical stature of the racist and the ignorant and the hateful and the paranoid, I'm not full of blood boiling rage. I am more about my guy than I am against them (probably a first in my adult political lifetime, and maybe contrary to what I said earlier). And while I do fear, do worry, that all my bitter cynicism following 2004 may very well be justified on Election Day, I still have the hope, the positivity, that this all may very well just happen as it should.

If Obama wins, does he win because the American people saw the light? That except for the extreme nutcases on the right, the great muddy middle finally saw the goodness and nobility of progressive ideas as embodied by Barack? Probably not. Americans are just extremely fickle. But in the grand scope of American history, in all its complicated and multi-layered roads, to be at this moment in and of itself constitutes a little miracle. One doesn't have to believe in anything divine to believe in miracles. When human nature time and again outdoes itself after years of expected behavior, that's a miracle. For all the flaws and hypocrisies, what happened in Philadelphia in 1776 was indeed a little miracle. And despite the horror of what's been done to peoples on this (and other) continents since, every step forward taken by people (as complicated and difficult as they have been and can be), is a miracle. Slowly but surely, despite all our machinations, we continue to show the ability to make progress. Times are very tough right now, and even though the last four years didn't prove to be the second coming of Hitler, America always stands at the danger of not just falling backwards but veering off onto dangerously wrong avenues of thought and action. An Obama win (and of course hopefully a good Obama administration) would not only steer the ship of state back away from those dangers, it would mark another great miracle in the complicated and often tragic story that began all those years ago.

Yesterday, I wrote we're gonna do it for Studs. And we still will. But we're also gonna do it for Joey. Talk about miracles - he got his former friend and political enemy Johnny to play on this song (as well as "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down"). And even now, as the political and personal background to the sad Ramones drama still plays out, it remains a little miracle that someone like Jeffrey Hyman was able to succeed in his life, a life that was cut way too short. So let's do it for him. And Strummer. And Cash. And for all the rest - Neil, Dylan, The Boss, Billy, Costello, Bragg, John and Exene (and though he disagrees with us, the good spirit that is Billy Zoom because we love him anyway), and all the others who are responsible for me being a pathetic mush I am right now. But above all, let's do it for ourselves and for this country and idea that - at least for me - Barack Obama has made me give one last chance on.