Reason #44 Why I Love America

In 37 hours and 17 minutes, the person I've known as President of the United States my entire semi-adult life is leaving office forever. I am genuinely excited for this day to come and for his successor to take the oath of office. Keep in mind I voted for the guy I'm happy to see go and did not vote for the guy taking his place. I regret neither vote. John Kerry was a good alternative to George W. Bush in about the same way waterboarding is more desirable than having to watch Gigli on permanent loop. And I'd still prefer that John McCain had won the election, so long as his running mate was Bobby Jindal, Joe Lieberman, or just about anyone else than Caribou Barbie. I'm not going to say that "the stakes have never been higher" except that I just did, and they are, but our condition is such that ideology should be put off the stove until people find work again and we lose this general sense of just hazy doom. As a Republican, I am as ashamed of the Bush administration in the way that most good Germans feel about Adolph Hitler; both are groups forever scarred by the memory of one wreckless period. We're inheriting someone with intellectual curiosity, one with the desire to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number, a person who doesn't make the hard decisions just because he's "not afraid to make them." You look at President-Elect Obama and you see somebody who is hungry, not someone who is blind. And I hope that four years from now I do enter a booth and vote to re-elect him, because that means we'll be better off than we are today.

But my point is more this: Where else in the world will you find a process like we will have this Tuesday? Power will transition from one hand to a diametrically opposed 'nother, without a drop of blood shed or so much as a visible sign of resentment. In some places, people would be dying in the streets on Tuesday and the National Guard would have to keep order. We have pomp and circumstance and Beyonce and Bono and probably the coolest public party to come along since V-E Day.

Some say that the American people have lost their way. That excesses and greed and virtual life have turned us irrevocably into instant gratification whiners. Well I'll give you an example of how far we have come. Seven years and four months ago, we were gruesomely attacked on our own soil. When the names of the perpetrators were released days later, objectively speaking now, would a name like Barack Hussein Obama look terribly out of place on that list? Yet three years later, his name entered our households as somebody who saw something better in us than we had seen in each other. The last time an attack by foreigners happened on our turf was Pearl Harbor. In the years to follow 1941, people with Japanese sounding names were interred in prison camps. In the years to follow 2001, a man with an Arab sounding name was elected president. In 1968, an act of hate fell a great leader. In 2008, a man's rise to leadership was made possible by that martyr. On January 19, we remember history. On January 20, history will happen. This is truly the time to be living in the United States of America.

Ping

This is going up just to let people know that I am still alive and am surviving my first busy season, and my fingers are eager to write some words that aren't "no exceptions noted" once this period is over.