Welcome to hoopleton.com -- the modestly radical literary website of K. P. Dawes. CONTACT ME HERE!

12/31/2008

Sentimental Crap

2008 leaves us tonight, and 2009 takes its place.

At least according to Christian tradition.

For Jews it's the year 5769. For Muslims, 1430. For Hindus, 1930. For the Mayans, 5121.

And the list goes on and on...

We mark these years and the memories we've accumulated, the lessons we've learned. We look back and of course we look forward. We wait for time to stop and we struggle against its unmerciful passage.

2008 has been a hard year. Disasters of every sort have plagued us. It was the last full year of the Bush Presidency. The fifth year of the war in Iraq. The seventh year of the war in Afghanistan. It's the year that the economy collapsed. The year that a Communist totalitarian state was allowed to use the spectacle of an international sporting event to rebrand itself across the world. That a former Communist empire began to reemerge from its hibernation. 2008 was a year of pirates, unspeakable terrorist attacks and assassinations.

Just as every year before it, 2008 saw the loss of film and literary legends, of singers, statesmen and rising stars.

But in 2008 we saw some small rays of hope in an otherwise dark horizon. A new kind of President. A new commitment to forward thinking. A general consensus that we've all had enough of the way things were.

So what will 2009 bring us?

My wish is for new beginnings. My wish and fervent hope is for a new world, one in which we can finally let go of the paradigms that we accept as being so natural, but are in fact the shackles of our self-imposed misery. My wish for 2009 is that it will be a year in which we transcend even this.

But looking at the whole expanse of human history, it's difficult to be optimistic. 2009, may be just as hard as 2008, if not harder. So instead of praying for world peace and a new spirit of humanism, I will instead only wish you the very best.

Know that even though I don't know you, or perhaps don't know you well, I love you. You are my brother. You are my sister. You are my friend.

12/27/2008

So This is Christmas...

It's the mid-point of the holidays and we stand on the brink of a new era. As we say goodbye to Christmas and prepare to welcome in 2009, we await with baited breath the arrival of a new administration in the White House, and what we hope will be a reinvention of America. We're all struggling these days. We all want to shed this burden from off our backs. We've waited so damned long.

The truth of it, the truth we'd rather not face, the reason why the air is so stifling, is that we are not a community anymore. Those values that some would claim to be our mandate have over the years dissolved. We have become what our founders feared and our enemies rallied against. We are not a nation, we are a munitions factory. A concrete strip-mall from sea to shining sea that exports bombs wrapped in the empty rhetoric of freedom. Merchants of death and high plunder scribbling recipes with a peacock feather.

Someone once asked me if I believed in God, to which I replied, "I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion." In my mind the lie that is the dogma of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and countless other belief systems shares the same perverted morality as what America has become. Good, honest people, whose will has been broken on the alter of self-serving self-interest. What was true about who we were has been lost in meaningless ritual and the empty embrace of our profit-driven high priests on Wall Street and on Pennsylvania Avenue. Where once good works and love of thy neighbor was enough to ensure the blessings of eternal happiness, now we thrive only off consumption and petty tribalcentric concerns. Whereas once we exported aid and trust and hope, we now pawn an arms industry that outspends every other sovereign nation on earth by a thousand times.

If God is for us than who be against us? If we continually divide the globe between us and them how can we every be citizens of the world? Sartre once called terrorism the atom bomb of the poor. Is there still room enough today, in this place, for that kind of understanding?

The reason why I hate the holidays is because it is a time when our hypocrisies become all too apparent. We sing songs and celebrate our communal love, while we increasingly isolate ourselves within the alters of holy shrines and under the banners of nationalism. We purport to embrace all mankind, while we elevate personal needs above the concerns of our shared humanity.

The economy has been raped and pillaged by the upper class. Thousands of decent people kill or are killed every single day. We destroy our planet with every trip to the gas station. We live in and support the business of war. We are the arms industry. We even celebrate the fact. And yet come Christmas we exchange presents, sing hymns to world peace and feel good about ourselves if only for an instant. We cannot find the strength to rise up, especially against ourselves.

My hope for 2009 and the coming of a new era in American politics is not that we will suddenly change our ways. It is that we at least begin to examine what we've become. Truth and reconciliation. Introspection and analysis. The rebirth of humanity. Perhaps we can again talk about living in a world where everyone is a neighbor, where religion and place of conception have as little meaning as the amount of sugar added to a cup of coffee. Where I am everyman, and he is me.

12/13/2008

Right Here

I walk down the street, where a thousand, maybe a million, maybe a billion, where a billion people have walked before. It's raining. The wind chills me through my coat. Passing faces. Passing glances. I pause before I go inside. I look to the cars all going somewhere.

I'll disappear one day. The faces I've seen on the street today will too. Those cars won't exist in five, ten, twenty years. The rain that's falling won't fall again.

I remember seeing the grave of St. Peter, twenty feet below the floor of the Basilica in Rome that bears his name. On the cracked stone that housed his bones was graffiti dating back almost two thousand years. All of it, no matter the language, had the same message, "I was here."

I was here.

12/09/2008

Chicago Fire

The most amazing thing about the state of Illinois is not the incessant scandals exposed on a near daily basis by the media, nor the massive corruption so transparently obvious at every single level of our local government, not even that an alarming number of Illinois governors, Rod Blagojevich being the latest addition to this infamous list in grand style, have faced any and all sort of criminal charges (former Governor George Ryan is sitting in prison at this very moment). No, what's truly amazing about the shit-laden swamp that is Illinois politics is that the people who toil daily in this mire of greed and corruption have as yet not staged a popular uprising, and in fact have actually refused repeated efforts to empower themselves.

Today, Rod Blagojevich, the Governor, was arrested on corruption and conspiracy charges. He is accused of trying to extort bribes in state funding deals, enriching himself and his family, and possibly worst of all, selling off the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Obama to the highest bidder. The evidence against him is staggering, coming in the form of recorded phone conversations and wiretaps, as well as, eyewitness testimony and bank transactions. But the best part about all of this, beyond the massive national implications stemming from the election of Barack Obama, is that everyone and their mother knew that the governor was being investigated by Federal authorities, and he did it anyway. Let me make this clear, when I say that everyone knew the Governor was being investigated I mean that even the Governor knew he was being investigated. It was in the goddamn paper. It was on TV. For months. He was even asked about it, but the idiot did it anyway. Like George W. Bush in a china shop, he just couldn't help himself.

I have to say that in today's political world it's a good thing that stupidity and incompetence aren't criminal offenses because we'd never be able to build prisons fast enough.

The sad part about all of this of course is that Blagojevich, just like his soon-to-be bunkmate, former Governor Ryan, is just the tip if a very large iceberg. For example, Illinois pays some of the highest fees and taxes in the entire country. In the city of Chicago, residents pay more in property taxes and transportation costs than in any other Midwestern state. With every year there are budget deficits, deals to close the holes, while fees and taxes rise constantly. Good times or bad, there's never enough money, while on an almost daily basis the papers are filled with stories of billions going into the pockets of mobsters and corrupt city bosses. In Illinois and in the state's premier city it's political dynasties that rule, such as the Daley family, or the Storgers, both placing hundreds more relatives and friends on the roles with every election cycle (even I was once given a patronage job in the State Treasurer's Office thanks to my connection, or as the man highering me for the position that didn't actually exist yet, told me: "We get hundreds of applications in this office every month, but because your friends with [name withheld] yours got to the top of the pile."). But the stench gets even more pronounced the further in you go, as beneath the layers the rich and powerful of Illinois not only steal from the poor but then exchange their ill-gotten wealth for sex and all manner of other vices right under the noses of the reporters and watchdogs keeping tabs (speaking once again from personal experience, it was my connection to such a secretive sex parlor that got me my patronage position in the first place - the biggest scandals are often those unseen and unknown by the public).

Despite all of the overwhelming, obvious and plain evidence that we are being fucked on an almost continuous basis by those in power, we continue to vote down constitutional changes that might provide relief, we reelect the purveyors of our own misery, and we sit in silent compliance, seemingly unable to offer any defense against the ravages we endure.

The state of Illinois has been a corrupt snake bed since the days of Lincoln, but today, as exemplified by the comic tragedy that is Governor Blagojevich, things have only gotten worse. Blago was an idiot, but he was also supremely arrogant, convinced that he'd never be prosecuted, little alone arrested. Partly, this is because politics in this state is just that corrupt, but I suspect that the main cause for this flawed perception of invincibility has more to do with the Governor never realizing that what he was doing was illegal. How could he know? Extortion, conspiracy and theft are just business as usual in Illinois. In most other parts of the country the mafia disappeared, here, in the Land of Lincoln, it went into government instead.

12/02/2008

Burning Down the House

During my brief absence from these pages I've decided on a few things, and the most important of these is that the Big Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) are indeed run and operated by a pack of retarded monkeys. I say retarded monkeys as monkeys in full control over their mental faculties would obviously have done a much more competent job of managing America's automotive industry than the collection of drooling morons that is doing the job now. This is quite a shift from the maniacally evil, albeit somewhat intelligent assholes who drove the Big Three until recently, harming this nation over the last hundred years not by their massive idiocy but by good old-fashioned greed and shortsightedness.

In its history the Big Three have been responsible for the destruction of America's urban centers, lobbying and bribing away electric trolley systems from New York to Los Angeles so that city governments would invest in buses and fueling this nation's addiction to automobiles. The most direct example of this effort to undermine the nation's urban infrastructure is Detroit, a city barely alive today, thanks in part to the efforts of GM, Ford and Chrysler to do away with that city's entire public transportation system. The Big Three have also undermined America's national security and helped stoke the fires of global warming by successfully lobbying against raising CAFÉ (fuel efficiency) standards since the 1970s, ranking the United States below even China in terms of fuel inefficiency and car pollution. The Big Three have for decades gone out of their way to suppress safety standards and alternative fuel technologies. The Detroit automakers have forced local and Federal governments to invest billions in more roads and highways, despite all the evidence showing that more cement would not alleviate traffic congestion patterns. They have been found to engage in price fixing and conspiring against consumers. And if all that wasn't bad enough, most recently, after taking so much from the people of the United States, they packed up most of their factories and moved them overseas, settling on the manufacture of gas guzzling SUVs when all indications showed that smaller cars such as hybrids were the way to the future.

Now to be fair, not all the blame rests in the boardrooms. The United Auto Workers union, a collective that has not displayed one iota of competence in forty years and that continues to prop up an industry that should have died eons ago, certainly has its share in the fiasco that is America's automotive industry. What is the salary for a UAW factory worker? If you take into account base pay (starting at about $28 an hour), overtime, benefits and pension, the average UAW employee costs on average about $65 an hour. I fully support collective bargaining and good wages, but $65 an hour? This is at a time when starting pay for a teacher in Chicago is in the mid 30s? But the worst crime here is not the ungodly amount of money, and unfair wages, it's the very real fact that it's the UAW's own lobbying efforts that have helped keep this corrupt, inept industry alive for so long.

It's a simple principal: if something is inefficient and bad for this nation it should be allowed to die. People are concerned about the damage to the economy, but in the wake of the Big Three's collapse something new, something better would take its place (see: Tucker). Capitalism, although as flawed as Communism in its utopian declarations, can only truly operate when there is real competition, but how are new industries with new ideas supposed to come about if corporations like GM, Ford and Chrysler have a strangle hold over the entire sector of the economy? In my mind the monkeys need to be put out of their misery.

What will happen instead? Pressured by the UAW, the prospect of Midwestern electoral votes and corporate lobbying efforts, GM, Ford and Chrysler will receive their revised $34 billion bailout from Congress. There will be strings attached. The automakers will make promises. The UAW will make some concessions. But in the end the shortsighted idiots that are the Big Three will be allowed to continue. Continue to undermine America's best interests. Continue to stifle new ideas. Continue to drain our financial reserves.

Sadly, in the end we have no one to blame but ourselves. Not because we may drive American cars. Not because we may work in the industry. Not because we won't write Congress to let the bastards fall apart. We are to blame because in our local communities we continually put self-interest above national and global interest. Because we do not stand up and call for the abolition of the Electoral College, a system that unfairly empowers unions in Michigan, coal miners in Pennsylvania, ethanol subsidy dependent farmers in Iowa, war hawks in Florida and factory workers in Ohio. Just as we support a dangerous corporate entity that has caused us nothing but harm, we support an election process that propels colloquial concerns to the national stage. There's a reason why certain states are swing states and Presidential candidates speak of clean coal and saving incompetent industries instead of looking the future.

11/17/2008

Yes We Did... now what do we do?

It's two months till Inauguration Day, which means the honeymoon is over and it's time to look at what we need to expect from our President-elect. So, for your cynical pleasure, I offer this short list of things that we and Barack Obama need to do in the many days to come.

1. Obama needs to deliver change. Rhetoric, even soaring rhetoric is one thing, but what this nation truly needs is real change. We live at a time of several converging emergencies. Two mismanaged wars, an economic system in collapse, the worst energy crisis in thirty years, healthcare in massive need of reform, a deficit out of control, the greatest environmental disaster in our entire history. And you thought being President was easy. Can Barack Obama solve all of our woes in four years or even in eight? Probably not, but he can get things moving in the right direction, but to do so he needs to truly shake up the system. Throughout his political career the Senator from Illinois has played it safe, but in these times there's just no room for stepping lightly. Obama needs to challenge power, set fires, tear down fences. Or to put it in other words, speak loudly and carry a very big stick.

2. Accountability is job one. The new President will need our support if he is to tackle the torrent of issues that threaten this nation and its people, but he will also need our criticism. Just like the majority of Americans I was ecstatic on Election Day, I'm proud of the choice we've made, but even though I like Obama (I may or may not have a poster of him on my wall), I will not back away from keeping him honest. The President-elect promised the people a transparent, reasonable and uniting government, none of us should be afraid of calling him out if he doesn't deliver. He is our President after all, we gave him the job. Besides, let's not repeat the blind fanaticism of the last eight years. Politicians are lying pieces of shit, let's make sure Barack doesn't become one.

3. The revolution cannot be stage-managed. One of the reasons why Barack Obama ran such an impressive campaign was because he and his staff micromanaged every event with the media spotlight in mind. Huge open-air rallies, prime time infomercials, mock Presidential seals. Made for TV theatrics are great if you want to build hype, but Obama needs to be more than that, he needs to be substance. With the challenges we face there will be plenty of unscripted moments. There will be plenty of things that seem to come from left field. Do I hear the phone ringing at 3am? If the moment calls for immediate response, if the challenges and choices that must be made may prove unpopular at the moment the new President must never hesitate. Again we go back to Obama's habit of playing it safe. The obsession with image. This is it, Barack. You won. So now what are you really going to do? We're waiting. We're hoping. And we want the real thing, no matter how ugly it may be.

4. Don't be Bill Clinton. The biggest tragedy of Bill Clinton's presidency was that he worked everyday thinking about the next election cycle. Instead of really doing anything substantial he sat on his hands for eight years and let the economic prosperity of the 1990s propel him to fame. Then he had sex with an intern and gave the White House to George W. Bush. I seriously doubt Obama would be stupid enough to get himself caught up in a cheating scandal, and he certainly doesn't have the luxury of an economic boom to let him off the hook of actually governing, but that doesn't mean he won't spend his time trying to hold onto power and doing as little as he possibly can. When FDR came into the White House he faced a mountain of crises and just like Obama found himself with a Democratic Congress and a people desperate for leadership. Instead of just sitting around (well, actually he was in a wheelchair so technically all he did was sit around), FDR jumped out of the gate (again, figuratively) with a full agenda of new programs and legislative reforms. In the end the man who led America through the Second World War did more in the first one hundred days of his Presidency than someone like Bill Clinton did in eight years. Obama needs to follow that same example. He needs to be FDR.

5. Don't be George W. Bush. All right, granted, to be George W. Bush, Obama would probably need a full lobotomy or at the very least several blows to the head, but I'm concerned with one particular issue: actually be a uniter, not a divider. Number forty-three promised this nation a unified government and instead what we've had for the past eight years is the most vile form of partisan wrangling in recent times. Obama has now promised us the same thing, a UNITED States of America. So, how does he do it? I think Hillary Clinton is actually a really solid choice for Secretary of State (something I will write about more if she actually does take the job), but for the Obama Presidency to really make new ground it needs to bring in some Republicans as well (though please, for the love of God, keep them out of the Treasury). How about John McCain for Homeland Defense? What I'd really like to see is Obama reach into the fringes as well. Why not? How about Ralph Nader for Commerce? The point is that this can't be a 100% Democratic voyage, others need to be heard. Embrace John F. Kennedy as your role model, bring in the smartest people from across the land, even if you disagree with everything they say. If not, you risk floating in a bubble of your own making, just like George W. Bush. Sure in that bubble the people love you, everyone thinks your super smart and no one has a problem with the way you pronounce "nuclear," but the rest of us need you out here.

6. Don't be a martyr. This one may seem trivial. This one may seem in bad taste, but I'm being serious here. Yes, drive in the armor reinforced limousine. No, never go anywhere that isn't completely secure. Yes, avoiding pissing off the CIA, Mafia and a ragtag collection of Cuban exiles all at the same time. No, do not go to the theater. Ever. The sad lesson of America, and really of World History, is that the good guys die and the assholes tend to live forever. Sure, Hitler killed himself, but Stalin, Pol Pot, Nixon and a whole array of other bastards just kept going and going. And yea, it's great to be remembered and idealized forever, but lets face facts, a living breathing Gandhi, MLK, JFK, RFK, John Lennon and Malcolm X (and these guys are just the top of a very big iceberg) would've been better for us than the symbols of martyrdom that they became. Be safe Barack. Stay with us and do good. As Bob Marley once said after being shot, the bad guys never take a day off, neither should we.

11/10/2008

Reader's Note

First I'd like to thank those readers who email me often with editing corrections. The occasional typo (or even serial error) gets through now and then. If I had an editing assistant maybe the website would be spotless, but as I don't, it's not.

This is just a blog, not the New York Times (though even they make mistakes).

Second I'd like to respond to the recent smattering of emails complaining that I've been too harsh on Sarah Palin, some even accusing me of sexism. To this I can only reply in that I would like nothing better than to see more women in the branches of our government. I think that the lack of female representation in the United States is highly embarrassing and insulting. Having said that, I'd like to make it clear that Sarah Palin does not represent the kind of candidate I could ever support, not due to her sex but simply due to her stated beliefs. Man or woman, I would not ever back down from attacking a public figure who so obviously champions the cause of intolerance, who uses the media spotlight to divide instead of inspire.

"You were so nasty about Palin just because she's a woman." To those who share this sentiment, I invite you to peruse the archives of this site and see for yourselves that my tone toward the Governor of Alaska has been in no way different, or harsher than anything I might have said about other political figures (men in particular) whom I have critiqued in the past. Those who would seek power need to be torn apart in public view, anything less would be undemocratic. And to assert that I should tone down my remarks because Sarah Palin is a woman, is inviting the type of sexism of which some may accuse me. The long and short of it is this: I don't believe that she is incompetent, or ignorant or dangerous because she is a woman. I believe she is simply incompetent, ignorant and dangerous.

This lively discussion through email has made me decide, however, that adding a discussion board to my website may be worthwhile. So, my sometime computer illiteracy not withstanding, I'll try to have something up in the coming weeks.

11/06/2008

Why McCain Lost

In many ways the road ahead for President Obama is steep, the expectations enormous, the weight of history so heavy that there seems to be few places to go but down.  I plan to tackle the challenges for Obama and for us, the viewing public, in the days to come, but for now I want to exam the reasons he won. Let's not kid ourselves, in many ways this election was for the Democrats to lose, but a combination of luck, superb campaigning and the failures of the Republican side made November 4th nearly inevitable.

So, in the spirit of making order out of the chaos, I offer this short list of why John McCain lost and Barack Obama won.

1. Bush. Unless you are some xenophobic, delusional idiot with his head up his own ass, you probably agree that George W. Bush has proven himself consistently to be one of the worst choices for President in this nation's history (the question of whether he actually won both of his elections I leave for you to decide). Two wars (both of which have turned into fiascos), a freefall economy, an enormous national debt, a tarnished American image (to put it mildly), a demoralized voting public, lies, scandal and cronyism of the worst kind, corporatism of the highest order, and massive stupidity have made the last eight years a living hell. Everything that number forty-three has touched has turned to shit, including the once proud party of Ronald Reagan (not that I'm a fan of Reagan, but at least he was halfway competent). But hey, what do you expect from a frat boy with daddy issues? Swimming against the stream of the Bush/Cheney years hit John McCain hard from the start, because it seems Americans tend to hold accountable the party in power for the horrendous mistakes they've made. And thank God for that. In many ways Bush defeated McCain in this year's election much as he did in 2000. The old maverick never stood a chance.

2. Palin. McCain's worst personal trait is that he's willing to do anything to win, including selling out his own principals. This led him to adopt Bush strategies and pick as his running mate Governor Sarah Palin. The former beauty queen, turned near fascist social conservative attack dog came out of the gate and energized the Republican base (or as I call it, the crazies). The only problem was that as the American electorate got to know her, she scared the shit out of everyone else. The tragically overambitious woman who had no idea what the Vice President actually did, believed in banning abortion in all cases including rape and incest, forced rape victims in the town of Wasilla to pay for their own rape kits, thought that living in a state bordering Russia gave her foreign affairs experience, and completely undercut the Republican argument against Obama's lack of experience, nearly immediately devolved into a frightening national joke (one she didn't get). What Palin did for McCain was that she made his age an even larger factor in the election, but the choice also tied him to the extreme Right wing. If the self described maverick had actually chosen a moderate Republican or even a former Democrat (as he had wanted to do) he could have played to the center and maybe had a real shot at the highest office in the land. Tragically, all he accomplished was to make Sarah Palin a household name, and the new standard bearer for the forces of intolerance. No, we haven't seen the last of her.

3. Tone. In a time in American history when people crave change it's stupid to push a constant torrent of negative attacks. Yes, Obama did it too, but the problem was that McCain and Palin did little else. The entire tone of the Republican campaign was that of fear of the other. McCain rallies in the last weeks of the election cycle turned into glorified lynch mobs where all that is worst about America came into full light. Screams of "terrorist" and "kill him" could be heard during campaign events. Uneducated whites ignorantly declared that they would never vote for a Muslim. Bill Ayers, ACORN, socialism, radical, became keywords in the Republican message. McCain's campaign became that of fear and only fear, especially when mixed with the Arizona Senator's tendency to come off as angry, dismissive and deeply out of touch in every debate and most of his public appearances. But perhaps the worst mistake of the McCain campaign was to attack Obama's record as a community organizer, essentially shouting a big "fuck you" to the thousands of people across this land who work daily in their neighborhoods to better the lives of their fellow man. Here's a pro tip: if you want to win an election do not go out of your way to insult a group of people who earn their living by knocking on people's doors and have an already established network of community outreach.

4. Message. So what exactly was the message from the McCain/Palin team? Honestly, it's two days after the election and I still have no idea. If John McCain's worst trait is his willingness to do anything to win, then his second worst trait is his tendency to remind everyone that he's only doing things in order to win. By October it seemed that McCain was contradicting himself so much that the election looked more like a three-man race. In one interview he would attack Obama as a socialist bent on the redistribution of wealth and then defend his vote for the economic bailout. All politicians are hypocrites, but man, was McCain bad at it.

5. Obamania. When you're running against the messiah you'd better be bringing your A game. Barack energized not only the base of the Democratic party, but a whole generation of new voters that came out in droves to vote, volunteer and donate whatever they could. He was a media darling. He was cool, intelligent, energetic and other than a few gaffs, extremely consistent in both tone and message. Obama seemed presidential, McCain did not. The full fury of history ran with the Junior Senator from Illinois. His speeches were lofty and inspirational. His rhetoric seeming to elevate America out of the gutter of the Bush years. Obama promised hope and change and spoke to the electorate as though they were good, intelligent people. The next President of the United States got himself elected not only because of what he said, or promised, but what he represented. He is the image of what America really is, of what it can become. Barack Obama is not just a man, he is an ideal, a paradigm shift, just as Kennedy before him. Just as Abraham Lincoln before that. His very presence is transformative. Frankly, running against that kind of cultural change, few people would ever stand a chance.

6. Luck. It's the economy, stupid. Or as in the case of the 2008 Presidential election, it's the collapse of the economy, stupid. John McCain was struggling against the Bush legacy, an insane running mate, a historic, transformative change in America's image, and then if all that wasn't enough the bubble burst. With the financial crisis on everyone's minds people did what they always do when the prospect of bad times looms, they drifted toward the protectionist embrace of the Democratic Party. Ironically, again, it was the policies of the Bush administration that laid the foundations for the crisis, as eight years of free-for-all spending and deregulation finally caught up with us. Stack on top of that Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama (perfectly timed revenge against his former employers) and a wide range of other mishaps, gaffs and media body blows, and you have a Democratic electoral sweep. Barack Obama won this election, but John McCain and a series of fortunate and unfortunate events greatly helped.

11/05/2008

The Afterglow

It's still sinking in.

Walking around Chicago today it's hard to meet anyone without a smile on their face. There's an energy in the air that Americans haven't felt in eight years, perhaps not even in fifty. Here deep in Obama Country the excitement is indescribable.

Obama is our President. He's this generation's Kennedy.

I ended up avoiding Grant Park last night and instead watched election night from a pub on the north side of the city. As the announcement of President-elect Obama's victory came, at first there was a moment of silence. No one could believe what they were seeing. No one could believe what they were hearing. Then the balloon burst and a roar went up so loud that the walls shook. On the streets car horns blared and people screamed.

I've never been one for fanaticism. I still think politicians are crooks. Obama may certainly end a disappointment. But it's hard to fight the tears of joy today. It may be cliché, but I finally feel hope. Or as a man I met last night said as we shared a drink, "I'm finally proud to be an American again."

11/04/2008

VOTE ...you jerk.

>> The Archives <<

All writing, media, images and artwork on this site are original works created by Krystian Dawes, unless otherwise noted.

Reprint without permission is prohibited.

Copyright @ KP Dawes, 2006-2008