New thoughts about the Election

I think I need to fix some of the things I said yesterday.

First of all I said I'm never that interested in American politics in general, I think that's the phrase I used. That doesn't give the right impression. I get interested in certain subjects, like the Iraq war and our country's decision to get into that war. In highschool I took a contemporary history class and we spent a good portion of the year discussing Iraq (it was fall 2003 and spring 2004 so the first year of our involvement there) and I did a presentation in front of the school on what could happen in the future there. It really interested me.

What I was referring to was maybe politicians. I never seem to get behind politicians the way I should. I was too young to vote when Gore ran and Kerry just didn't do it for me. I just never really threw my lot in with his like a lot of kids at my school.
One problem I had with him was that when I heard him speak, or when I read some editorials of his in the newspaper, I recognized faults in his writing and expression -- things that were unclear, vague, or just not strongly put. It was like reading my own writing. I knew that he was smart, but seeing these faults, well, I don't know it made it hard to really fall for him. These problems with clarity, with syntax, and grammar, with expression in general and writing specifically, are things I know very well. And we are most critical of others for having the faults we recognize as our own.

Today I received this email from my mom. I think she sent it yesterday:
Hi Sweeties,
I was sitting here in tears last night as the election results became clear and Barack Obama was elected President. This is a momentous event in the history of this country and, hopefully, the beginning of a sea change in how things will be in the country. You have lived through the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor with the accompanying and continuing terrorist threat to the country, and more recently the worst economic melt down since the Great Depression. Moreover, the climate and the planet are changing because of man made global warning. Not much of a legacy of my generation - the baby boomers. But now you will have a president of color - the first ever - who will be the leader at the beginning of your adult lives. Maybe this will be the first of many firsts that you will experience, such that his election will seem mundane in a few years. I have found him to be an inspirational figure - something that I have not experienced since my college years (maybe when inspiration was easier to come by). I see this election as passing of the torch to the next generation and see it as beginning for your generation. Ironically, I was the only one to be excited by Obama's candidacy - you all were more cynical or questioning. Anyway, I hope that you are excited about his election and the possibilities it presents.
I certainly hope that this country will be a better place for you all.
Love, Mom

It made me feel guilty. Then I thought of a reason for this detachment of mine from the political process which my mother doesn't seem to have. I was a kid when Clinton was president. It was during the stage in my development when parents were still gods: faultless. I didn't doubt adults as I do now. And Clinton fit with this world view perfectly. As a president he seemed faultless. Well, I have to eat my words. There was Monica Lewinsky. She did a lot of damage to his sheen. But that was toward the end of his presidency, and he still seemed unassailably smart and capable as President (to me). He was THE american president for me. I capitalize the because, well, he was the only one I had known therefore THE, and because the person and the job had melded together create this God like- figure/ office, thing! The president of the United States of America was not only a person in the most powerful office in the world, but a man worthy of that office, almost better than a man. (well, sort of. maybe I'm not giving the Lewinsky scandal enough weight.)

But then Bush was elected. I was in highschool and one of the first things I can remember of his presidency is watching him speak on television with my parents in the room and making fun of him. I was making fun of him, my parents were not. And my parents chastised me. I have a specific memory of making fun of how he said something during his state of the union address after 9- 11, (the "axis of evil" speech), and my mom yelling at me to be quiet. (Ok, so it was a sober moment, but still.) What I learned from that time was to keep my mouth shut when watching our leader, and to accept that I, someone who I do not believe is very smart compared to a lot of people, could create better sentences than the man who was president of our country. I mean, he had to be taught which words to put emphasis on in sentences. I know he was coached on this because I have noticed a vast improvement in his ability to say sentences and to link them together in the last couple years.
And it is partly because I have seen an improvement in Bush's speeches since he first came to office, and think that he at least SOUNDS more coherent than he did 8 years ago, that I get angry when other people trash him sooo easily these days. All of a sudden it's become cool to trash Bush. Well, I'm sorry he was a bigger idiot when he got into office, but because he was THE american president and because we had been attacked, we were just supposed to ignore it. And everyone did.

My point is, I learned to accept that my president wasn't that smart and to shut up about it. More importantly, to lower my expectations. THIS is my point. I was taught to lower my expectations about the president. To partly turn off my brain and my mechanism of criticism when I was listening to him and to all politicians (because as I said, Kerry never sounded so great either) and this caused me to detach. My mom called my brother sister and I more cynical than she. Maybe, (it's just coming to me now), maybe this cynicism comes from watching her generation follow Bush as if he were as smart as Clinton. From watching them listen to his speeches as if they weren't filled with incongruous sayings and awkward pauses, (speeches that sounded as if they were said by a person for whom english was not a native language). From watching them quietly follow a man who was our president as if he knew better than we did, when it was hard to believe that. I don't know whether I eventually convinced myself that he knew better than he sounded or if I just came to believe it wasn't correct to criticize a president anymore. I think that's it. I learned not to express my opinions about politics because it was disrespectful and anti- patriotic. It made me a smart ass. It's not just my parents here I am responding to, or the community I grew up in, I think it was the adult world as a whole, the newspapers especially.

So I learned to shut up, to disengage, and now my mom is saying I am cynical. Damn right I am.

I meant this to be an apologetic thing. To say I should be more like my mother, more aware of this great change in politics. And instead I have become angry and defensive. But I think I realized something as I was writing this, that my disengagement has been an adapted response to the state of politics and of politicians during the time I came of age.

Booyah. I wonder if this makes sense.