The symbolism—it burns! The ironic detachment force shield—it does Nothinggg!!

Gah, my cynicism is gonna be toast soon if I keep seeing stuff like this.

I'm still vascillating between giddy optimisim and crushing sadness at the outcome of Prop. 8. I'm hoping a weekend away from the intertubes (where I've been obsessively hunting down both expert and lay opinions on what happens next) will calm me down somewhat.

But yes, danf, that series is undeniably cool (I also think the Obama Dads are kind of hot).

This actually summed it up nicely for me.

This actually summed it up nicely for me.

*lights some incense, passes lrf the doob*

I'm with muddgirl. I'm giddily crushed and optimistically sad.

Which is actually my default state, come to think of it.

Why do we have to ever return to our cynical views? I say fuck all of that and let's get on to the monster view of kicking some serious ass now.

Now's the time for us all to step up and be leaders - there's plenty of time to cynicize everything down to gulpable portions, but I think now is more of a time to imagine the biggest, most impactful, grandest versions of ourselves we can come up with.

Anyone can say no.

How many of us can stand up and say yes?

damn, but this soapbox makes me look all kinds of tall and important-like.

I was a voting adult when Reagan was elected. I remember wearing black to work the next day. 1980. The country had just pulled itself out of Vietnam/Watergate, etc. but this is when the train wreck really started. All of the Reagan revisionism makes me sick to my stomach. There was nothing good about his era. He did not end the cold war.

So yeah, I am full of hope, in spite of Measure 8 (which cuts pretty close for obvious reasons).

The news conference today reminded me of films of JFK's new conferences. . .just a mastery of communication, and the material.

I kind of liked that boomer essay, lfr, but I would tweak it a bit. One reason we can believe in Obama is not that we've (I include myself in Generation X) become like boomers, but that he's not a boomer leader. He's a cut-the-b.s. Gen X-er who has always considered the conventional wisdom, but saw how things needed to be done differently. His campaign was successful largely because he didn't try to use 60s methods of getting people to support him - he used FaceBook, viral video,a great website, PDFs with elaborate details, rejection of old polarities, a willingness to talk about values, text messaging, excellent graphic design and web design, professional and fully integrated marketing, challenge and sacrifice, and all sorts of ideas boomer politicians have basically completely failed to grasp to send some really simple, time-honored, basic American messages. Gen-Xers like him because he's not full of shit.

One of my instructors in a management class I took two years ago, a great organizational psychologist, was describing some generational theory with us in a class. Among the things he said about the baby boom was that they were "moralizers, but compromisers." They are able to articulate high ideals and describe visions, and they may really believe in those ideals to the bottom of their souls, but they are ineffective at bringing them to completion because their generational psychology can be seen as geared very much toward quick gratification and personal satisfaction. When the ideals came into conflict with the need for satisfaction of desires, it was the exceptional boomer politician who could resist the blowjob under the desk, the fistful of dollars, the plum appointment, the kickback, the chance for quick profits without considering future impacts. Clinton and Bush were both boomer Presidents, and both examples of people whose ideals and goals were articulated well enough, but who highly compromised their stated ideals for self-serving purposes. That kind of dissonance is anathema to Generation Xers, who grew up during the era when kids were first confronted with a widespread epidemic of broken homes, broken schools, and broken adult promises.

So we grew up learning to be totally cynical and cautious, withholding out trust, and judged leaders pretty much on policies and positions rather than on anything as slippery and disappointing as character. Obama's managed to awaken hope in people because he appears to be a person of good character - a recognizable person of a type not that different from ourselves. He came from a home without a father; rather than admire his parents' freewheeling me-first freedom to experiment with relationships, his reaction was to establish a very tight, secure, stable nuclear family. He's someone who has ideals, but is practical about how to achieve them (and understands that that rarely involves marching around with spray-painted slogans on bedsheets.) He's someone who understands that it's not all about him --- that you can be as awesome as possible, but unless you make people feel genuinely meaningful, heard, and included no one else really cares about your goals. As much as he's called a 'rock star' he doesn't have a 'rock star' mentality (Bill C. does, and I say that as someone who admires him). He understands that money can do a lot, but a network of social relationships does more, faster, and more powerfully.

I could go on and on, but this is a generational shift that has a lot of meaning in American history. This man will govern differently because of the time in which he grew up. He hasn't got the baggage of the 60s heyday of ideals and dreams disintegrating into the mess of the 1970s and the growing alienation from politics and indifference of the 80s. He's not looking to revive a past time that he thought was better - he's looking at the future, and at reviving an American dream that got dropped along the way in pursuit of something else.

Sweeping generalizations here, but grains of truth that are worthwhile. He represents a fresh start in terms of leadership style, and he's someone that many people formerly very much disappointed in and cynical about their leaders up until now can recognize themselves in as the new kind of leader they would like to have, and like to be.

damn, but this soapbox makes me look all kinds of tall and important-like.e can all see up your skirt, too.

And w

sigh

Miko, I don't think anyone could have put that better. I'm tempted to quote every single word of it.

I realized the other day, with great joy, that I may never have to sit through another election consisting of month after month of people bickering back and forth about what they did or did not do in Vietnam. And I am SO GLAD that era has passed.
I'm sure to some people it's a huge thing, but christ, I'm just about 30, my parents were too young to have fought in Vietnam. It might as well be WWII for as distant as it seems to me. Even my mom said, in 2004, "you know, I'd really like to hear what they want to do NOW, I don't give a shit what they did when I was in high school"

oh, and I love this. Maya Angelou says "I'm so filled with pride for my country. What can you say, we are growing up!" (the interview with her starts at about the 3:00 mark)

1997. As a Brit, that's all I need to say.

Your cynicism will return. But love this moment for what it is. It is a great moment.

1997. As a Brit, that's all I need to say.

What happened in 97? (this isn't ignorant american so much as it is ignorant youngster- I was still in high school then)

kellydamnit, I *am* an ignorant american but methinks it's a reference to tony blair...

omg Miko, so very true. this here is the gist tho:

Gen-Xers like him because he's not full of shit.

granted, I reserve the right to cock the raised eyebrow at him to put his money where his mouth is now that he's got the job. However, as a child raised by idealistic, self-indulgent hippies who would rather smoke pot and save the whales than bother to check that I was going to school on a daily basis or (god forbid) have the talk about responsible sex and teen dating, I can honestly say this campaign has at least on the outset shown a level of transparency and integrity that's been sorely lacking in U.S. government as a whole for the bulk of my lifetime.

My comment was more a joke than anything. I'm not a very cynical person. I used to be, but somewhere along the way I've lost a lot of it.

Apologies for offending, I'll just show myself out.

methinks it's a reference to tony blair...

ahhh... ok, that does make sense.
I can kinda see the similarity, but there is another layer to this, I think. It isn't just the triumph of the left wing, or of the youth vote.
If you look at it in terms of the pretty brutal history of US race relations it is astounding. A guy who, what, fifty years ago, would have been sent to the back of the bus will be moving into the white house. And it wasn't just black people who put him there- he outperformed his opponent among every group but the elderly.

Let me put it this way, for the cross-atlantic perspective: the first time I saw the new Doctor Who I was astounded by Rose and Mickey, because the only time you see interracial relationships on tv or whatever here is when the plot is all about interracial relationships. You never see, say, an asian guy and a black gal shopping for a couch in a commercial, or a middle eastern man and a white woman discussing the importance of life insurance for their kids.
But the BBC? They never mentioned it. It wasn't a big deal. That simply wouldn't happen here. And it isn't a reflection of our networks being more socially conservative, it's our society.
The duration of my marriage, whenever people met or saw a picture of my husband, I would get "ohhh... I didn't know he was Native American/Indian/not a white dude, what did your parents think about that?" followed by a look of disbelief when I said my parents didn't care. And I live in a very socially liberal area. We're still at that level of fucked up here. And we somehow managed to elect an interracial man to the highest office in this nation. It really gives me a lot of hope for our future.

LT, seriously, I think it's nice that you're interested in politics now, but you really need to step back and mellow out some. You're acting like one of the grillion Beatles fans in the late 60's that would collect the dirt that the band had walked on because it was precious. I do think it's good to support something, but it's even better to support something with a questioning attitude. When you press them to continue to be honest and transparent, as lfr puts it, then they will continue to do so. Once you get into the blind fandom, then they'll walk all over you, and you'll love it as they ream you, and they'll fail in the larger context. Perhaps I am a cynic, but I think everyone needs to question everything.

I don't get it. Two kids shared a sign. Or is this something I would need to be incredibly cynical to be swayed by?

It's symbolic, Eideteker. You don't need to be incredibly cynical to be swayed by it at all. I'm with you in that I don't think there should be any notice payed to the race of the kids and the fathers, but we still live in a society where race does matter, so it is symbolic of the barriers being broken down.

My oldest brother and his wife (both white) have adopted 3 biracial children. Out here in the west, it's not an issue with anyone. The only place they've run into any problems is in Georgia, and it came from both black and white people. So you tell me if I should be cynical. Quite frankly I'm overjoyed that two families of different races can get together like in the photos. As I said, race still does matter, but hopefully it doesn't matter as much now as more and more barriers fall.

Oh, hey, their skin was different colors. I guess that's significant to some people.

Unfortunately, it is significant to some people - a lot of them, actually - and it's going to take a lot of experiences and images like this until that's totally irrelevant. I wish I could ignore that fact. I wish I didn't have to hear it from people I know, ever. I wish everyone were able to be blase about it, but as long as skin color is an important issue to even just 10% of people, it's as important as any other issue 10% of people care about. It's still enough of an issue to cause problems, and still important to demonstrate disregard for the problems caused by discomfort with racial difference. I wish race wasn't still something people fret about, but it is.

It's so weird. As someone of mixed heritage, you'd think I'd spent my whole life "fretting" about it. Maybe I'm just some combination of lucky/naive/stupid to have missed it in my lifetime.

I think this will remain a thing as long as we treat it like a thing. Once we stop treating it as a special, rare, and magical occurrence, it will become the norm. Or is it the other way around?

Eide - I think it's both what you say and what others have said now. There's no way around it - this is a special, rare and well, not really magical, thing.

This is the beginning of something that could hopefully become prosaic, as you said. I'd love that, personally.

It flattened me over the course of this election hearing people who went through four or five rationalizations over flag pins and hand-over-heart nonsense before they suddenly said, "Well, I just can't vote for a black man."

I personally can't get enough of this sign-sharing stuff.

And Eekacat? My enthusiasm up-thread isn't about Obama fandom, but about personal responsibility.

Sure, his election sparked a lot in me, but the sentiment I was getting at has more to do with the hope that people who were prompted into action by his campaign, that desire for community service, doesn't go away.

I don't for a minute think Obama came fully-sprung out of God's ass, or that I set up a little shrine for him.

There's a lot of work to be done if this country is going to get out of the problems it's facing right now, and I think the medicine will go down a lot easier if we could keep a positive, "what can I DO about this?" attitude, then descending into "oh cool - now we can all start up the cynicism/I told you so-ism" stuff.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's time for us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to try and connect to a larger vision. Not just stay within ourselves and create intellectual knots to rationalize doing anything about the problems we have.

It's an easy jump to say no to something - there's always a way to find fault and look cool doing it.

It's another to make time out of your day to create something better, to look for answers, create more positive thought and action in the world.

That's what I took out of Obama's run for the Presidency, and that's not fandom, that's an epiphany.

The hard part is holding on to it. Regardless of what he does.

I think this will remain a thing as long as we treat it like a thing.

But, as someone who's definitely seen and heard too much overt racism in my time, it's more concrete proof that racists aren't right about people. That's something you or I might have known to be true, and like-minded people know it too, but I have, sadly, run across people who don't know it yet. It's they who make it 'a thing,' and if we oppose it only with silence, it empowers their feeling that it IS 'a thing.' I think we need to celebrate American unity to demonstrate that racism really is getting to be an extreme position.

Again, I'm totally with you in spirit, but demographics show that we haven't had a polity in which black people and white people often voted for the same candidate in similar numbers and for similar reasons. One reason for our cultural divides, right vs. left, in this country has been that politics has often sought to divide people along racial lines in order to reduce the power of a combined middle-class and working-class vote. Political theorists have long been saying that if ever a politician can get poor and middle-class whites and poor and middle-class blacks to realize that their best interests really are the same, then that person can really get change done. Obama's methods have squared that circle, at least for this term. A majority of voters, a racially diverse majority, realized that their bread is buttered on the same side. I've read too much about this election to think race was immaterial in it; there was a lot of convincing, a lot of winning of hearts and minds to be done, particuarly in places like Ohio and Virginia where race has been one the very few status markers in very poor communities. We don't get beyond racism by wishing it awaor pretending it's invisible, we get beyond it by demonstrating that equality and mutual respect works, we like it, and there's nothing to fear about it.

It's they who make it 'a thing,' and if we oppose it only with silence, it empowers their feeling that it IS 'a thing.' I think we need to celebrate American unity to demonstrate that racism really is getting to be an extreme position.

yes, this. A nice side effect of this will be all those SOBs I called for Obama who dropped N-bombs on me and said shit like "what, are you crazy, Virginia will never vote for one of them." now get to see that hey, they're they're not in fact a member of some silent racist majority, and maybe a few will do a bit of introspection as they realize most of their neighbors had no problem voting for the man.

I don't for a minute think Obama came fully-sprung out of God's ass

I do... and when come January 20th when he rides into DC on his unicorn made of pure hope and sheds a single tear that will instantly cure cancer, aids, and hate you'll all see!!

ha!

I have your tears, Gypsy!