post-optimism
posted 2 February 2009, 19:39 by Mike
I was thinking (this happens sometimes) in the car about Obama’s win, which has been mentioned to death but just humor me. It was pretty much a landslide victory, and that, coupled with the enormous, almost royal fanfare that accompanied his inauguration, is evidence enough that there’s more too it than him being a good candidate.
I think the voting population today has grown up more aware of the greed, callousness, and murder that has made this country great, in a way that’s more honest than ever before. Plenty of people could tell you about the collapse of “grand narratives,” stories which serve to legitimize actions, ideologies, whatever. The idea of a shining city on a hill, America the Divinely manifested, is undermined by the facts of history. There’s nothing divine about segregation, slaughtering natives, or industrial exploitation. There’s is so much counter-history that is toxic to America’s claim to legitimacy. The mind of a moderately informed American citizen is such fertile soil for cognitive dissonance, that it was desperately for pathos, for some kind of relief.
And I’m not boiling it down to white guilt, at all. Not any black candidate would have done. But if nothing more it’s an attempt at a declaration of independence from history. Take, for instance, the number of times the term “post-racial society” came up during and after the election. It really felt like a millennial celebration, eight years after the fact, shedding the bad parts of the last 2000 years (and holy fucking shit were there a lot) and having a chance to earn the right to exist for another thousand years.
I’d be lying if that didn’t excite me. There’s a lot these days to be excited about. But I’ve grown into a fiercely depressive optimist, which is to say I believe in slow, painful progress and the deceptiveness of dreams (and hope). Ebullience, while necessary sometimes, is easy to get caught up in, to the point where you’re no longer paying attention. Judith Butler wrote an article about it, calling it “Uncritical Exuberance”. She, in fact, explcitly says that “the election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption,” and that in thinking so “we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times.” she’s speaking of redemption from the Bush era, but the line of sin can obviously be traced much much further.
At this point it doesn’t seem like that is going to be a problem. It seems Obama’s being watched more than any other human being has been watched before. I kinda feel bad for him about that, but who knows, maybe he’s fueled by it. But he’s obviously a symbol of some kind of new America, long in progress. Symbols sell, and they’re powerful, due to their brevity.
Anyway, if that was too many words for you try this: lol dongs
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FINAL BOSS APPROACHING Nobuo Uematsu is adorable and awesome