blogger interrupted

Parts 1-4 of My Barack Journey here.

I’ve spent the last two days since election night trying to come up with something to say about this moment that made any sense to me.  Because like so many Americans, even as I predicted this outcome for months, I was taken by surprise by my own emotions in the last 2 days.

My Barack Journey led me to create the #7 most viral YouTube of the 2008 campaign.  Regular readers will recognize that there must be something else, something in me, that drives a guy with so much baggage himself to continually put his own name & reputation out there for people to poke at – even to the point of becoming national news.  Even to the point of confronting bigots to their face with a camera.

When I boarded the O-Train, I didn’t recognize immediately how enormous this moment would be, if we succeeded.  I figured it out quickly, though, and blogged about it constantly, as people wondered what the hell I was talking about.  I recognized that in 2008, we tapped into America’s 400-year battle with itself.  I survived my own hell long enough to be blessed to be alive for this moment – that gift couldn’t go unappreciated.  So I jumped in feet first.  

Why on earth would I do that?  

My problems, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, don’t amount to a hill o’ beans compared to this moment.  It’s a special kind of grace to emerge so scarred by your own stupid mistakes, and yet still be able to contribute your skills, your work, your energy, into a battle whose towering heroes made the cause of their lives, even deaths –  heroes who span the entire history of our country.

As Barack said, as long as we breathe, we hope.  I don’t harbor any illusions about the difficulty my life still faces.  But if November 4, 2008 can happen – and I can play a small role in that – then hope is real in this America.  Even for someone like me.

I thought I was boarding an O-Train, but in fact, it was the A-Train –  America.  And her history.  The 2008 election may be the first time this country has dealt with race voluntarily, as a whole, with clarity and deliberation – and made the right decision.  That train’s been a long time comin’, and if you stood in its way, like the Republican Party did, you made a terrible mistake.  

Desperation at the sight of that train bearing down on them forced Republicans and so many others to reach for the sharpest weapons of our history that once were able to derail it.   

Fail.  

And you will own that decision, whoever you are, for the rest of your days.  Your heirs will demand to know where you stood on this day.  Your American pedigree will be measured by this day.  It will be the single most important fact of your life as a voter, how you voted on November 4, 2008.  And cowardice will not be a refuge, not forever.  Only your vote will.

Barack Obama could fall flat on his face, his government could spend every day of the Obama Administration screwing things up beyond recognition, he could prove to be a total disappointment.

But what Barack Obama did on November 4, 2008, is so important to America, it simply does not matter how he performs as President.  The mere fact that he will be President, at all, dwarfs anything he may do in office.  I fully expect Barack to fulfill my own expectations of him, but even if he didn’t lift a single finger after January 20, this country owes him a debt it can never repay.

I was around for that moment, I was an American for that moment, an American with a vote, a fact which was not certain in the least…because of hope.  Because this is still the greatest country on earth, where someone like Barack Obama can be president, and someone like me can find his own grain of hope from it, grab it, own it, and sustain a life with it.

That’s why I can’t stop tearing up.