Intermittent Rant

I’ve always considered myself a committed moderate and independent eschewing party affiliation and the labeling that often goes with it. But I have a confession: I’ve been rooting for Barack Obama in secret for a while now. And I promised myself that if he won Iowa, I would become an Obamaniac. Well, he’s won Iowa, and so…my fellow Americans, I stand before you today to announce my support for the candidacy for President of the United States.

And I think he can win. He’s become a shrewd politician. Think about it, he understands that politics is not about litanies of promises or strictly about experience and how good a candidate’s resume is. He understands it’s about narratives. It’s about the story you tell. When people say, “It’s too early. He should wait a couple of election cycles,” he counters with MLK’s “fierce urgency of now”. When people say, “He’s too fresh. He doesn’t have the experience,” he talks about having the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience. When people talk about him being black enough or white enough, he asserts that he’s not running for Black America or White America but the UNITED States of America. And most importantly, he’s talking about CHANGE, when the people are yearning, shouting, screaming for CHANGE.

So my vote’s for CHANGE. My vote’s for Barack Obama.

So I’m trekking around Washington like I always do…on foot, when I decide to give ol’ Mr. Lincoln a visit. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial, I think to myself as a meander through the throngs of tourists and midday joggers. It was a sweltering day beautiful as it were and the city was awash in vibrant colors. If any of you have been to the Washington, you’d know what a long, arudous journey it can be between the Capitol and the Memorial. Doesn’t seem that long. The walk is almost laughable. But there you are trudging onwards thinking when the hell am I gonna get there???

But I finally made it. I swept up to the top of the steps — one by one — seeing Honest Abe peek out onto the capital horizan. And there I was, all of a sudden, in the presence of the Great Emancipator himself in all his glory. It’s almost a religious experience…even after all the times I’ve been there. It always reminds me of the ancient Temple of Zeus from the days of yore…whatever yore means. And when you think about it, all the cities of the world…from Rio and its Christ the Redeemer statue at Corcovado to Paris and Notre-Dame Cathedral…the rest of the world is littered with monumental tributes in the name of religion. Yet here in Washington, our tributes are not generally for the sake of religious figures but rather ordinary men and women. OUR capital city contains tributes to fallen soldiers and great political leaders. Rather than Jesus or the Virgin Mary, we see visions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

So then I think about what it is in the American spirit that impels us to “worship” these figures and give them god-like status in our American pantheon. But then it struck me. It’s not that we are raising them to the level of gods. All of these people stood for something, symbolized a value, and it is not these people that we are elevating, but the values they stood for. It is these American values that we wish to worship and hold sacred. It binds us all as Americans. When Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…that all men are created equal…”, when Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream…”, when Roosevelt shouted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”, they were espousing our values.

So whenever I see a monument — which happens often in this city — I think about these values. I think about the American religion. It is something deeper than partisan rancor, deeper than Jesus. It’s the thing that truly unites all of us Americans. The anthem, the flag, the eagle all prostrate themselves in this temple, the temple of the great American experiment. So if a politician were to ask me how to get in touch with the American people, I’d smile and point to the Lincoln Memorial and say, “Talk to the man upstairs.”

I was thinking today about how wonderful Norman Rockwell’s paintings were. If you’re not familiar with Normal Rockwell, be sure to check this out. Let’s just say I’m probably the only brown man in the country that admires Norman Rockwell, but that’s beside the point. I was thinking about their irony…yes, irony, for the images that he painted were quite simplistic. Some of them almost mundane. Yet they all seem to convey something extraordinary, something that really strikes a chord (with me, anyway) both as an American and as a human being.

His paintings almost have a certain intrinsic value system. They espouse a way at looking at life…rosy in some ways, starkly real in others…but all of them evoke an ideal. Some could say it is an American ideal. Now I’m not white, so aside from the “White people are so cute!” feelings they muster, I see within them an exuberance for life…something characterized by the American people…an unabashed willingness to reach out into new frontiers, to greet new challenges with a fresh face and an open palm, to cherish our paltry existence on this dear earth of ours with pride and dignity. These are traits I see as uniquely American.

After the election, many of my blue state friends began to wonder about the red states. What happened? Where’s the America I knew? How did America become so fundamentalist? I was wondering that myself. And of course, it’s caused this great rift in the nation…a nation that puts “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one) on its coins. Yet here we are. It’s we versus them.

But it’s not. I keep hearing that the Democrats have lost touch with the American people, that religious fundamentalism is all the rage now. And perhaps too they will get someone like Pat Robertson or God knows who else on their bandwagon. But I look at the paintings of Norman Rockwell, and I see the real America. There’s a simple truth to them that the Democrats have lost sight of (and the Republicans exploit). They say all politics are local, and they’re right. When your life consists of saying grace at the dinner table, getting ready for the prom, getting the latest gossip from the neighbors, what do you care about healthcare and lockboxes?

I must admit I’m a blue stater in my own way, so I don’t think GW Bush necessarily speaks for these people. But for the love of God, there’s got to be someone out there that does!