Great and Sober Joy

Hello, Friends,

It is a historical moment, almost beyond comprehension, that Barack Obama is President elect and that he and his family will soon be living in the White House... A black man and his family presiding and residing in the "White" house.
What is in the minds and hearts of black Americans now, especially older black Americans, is beyond my white person's comprehension. However, from my point of view--having been born in the forties and grown up in the fifties, etc., this story, if it would have been written then, could have been published only in a fantasy and science fiction magazine; maybe Ray Bradbury would have written it.
I remember a great scene in Bradbury's Martian Chronicles-- a beautiful book-- that--once Mars had been found to be safe and relatively easy to get to for residents of Earth-- All the black people in the American South just packed up and left... They all left, quietly and calmly-- leaving amazed whites lined up alongside the roads, just staring at them in disbelief and an odd kind of bereavement. If, during the time Bradbury was writing, if you were an American black and you wanted to find someplace to go to escape racist misery, you had to go to Mars to find it--obviously Detroit and New York and Chicago weren't really far enough...
Anyway, here we are now... What comes next, who can tell? Mr. Obama, as seems only fitting for a minority (minority for now--in about three or four decades, whites will be the American minority), finally gets the top job in the country-- but he has to shoulder the heaviest Presidential burden in almost a hundred years-- What he is inheriting is right up there with Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Its not a precise historical comparison-- no two moments in history could be. We've never been in a Depression and two wars at the same time before... But its just as about as bad as it can be-- and will take not just the President-elect's great skills and endurance to pull us out of it, but massive amounts of luck, international change and maybe even God's grace...
Does Mr. Obama have the intellectual gifts and perseverance of Lincoln and Roosevelt to do what he has to do? It certaintly seems like he does. Now he will need as much help as a President has ever gotten from his country. Can he count on that? Well, we'll see. You can only hope that those who are enraged or at the very least disaffiliated by the the reality of this man as President, will finally see that it is in their own vital interest to cooperate with what he has to do to save this country.
And-- a smaller consideration... Now what happens to all the news and talk and political shows? They must, inevitably (and naturally) take a huge dip in audience. Its a funny thing-- being on the radio and having a political talk show--I can feel everybody out there taking a vacation-- maybe one that lasts a long time... And shows like Jon Stewart's-- it will be like Court TV after the O.J. Simpson trial.
There is a kind of empty feeling that accompanies the joy and hope that goes along with this finaly achievement of this great event .. The anti-climax-- like the dropping off people often feel after sex or a huge undertaking has been accomplished. But there is, along with the worry and doubt and fear, also a great feeling of relief that the criminals, murderers and theives who have almost ruined this country during the last 8 years are soon to be gone. If there is any justice, many of them should be indicted and convicted for crimes against America. But retribution does not seem to be in Mr. Obama's nature and I guess its right we try to follow suit...
A moment of joy-- sober joy, but amazed joy, that such a thing should happen in this country.

Mike

mikefeder@nyc.rr.com