Battle Hymn of a Loser

(I had prepared this post in the unfortunate event that Barack Obama were to lose the Presidential Candidacy.  For my entire adult life I've known only one man as President and only now do I breath easily and thank god.)

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide."
- John Adams

We were promised the world and today we lost it. But things could be much worse. We lived through Bush and plenty of others lived through Nixon. And that’s where I’m at now: ready to live through Nixon and the Vietnam War.

Friends of mine have told me that if the Democrats lost this race they’d leave the country. To each one of them I asked the same question, “when?” When you’re done with school? When you have the money? When it gets a little worse? It’s an unrealistic threat they make.

How much of our anger is real? As much as we may complain about the Bush administration and the U.S. government we didn’t riot in the streets in 2000 when the election was stolen- we were a civilized group of losers. We played into American mythos and to the thief went the spoils.

It should come as no surprise that we’ve been indoctrinated but there’s something about our sense of Democracy that seems genuine- inherent in us as Americans. Which is why it’s so upsetting when our Democracy fails us.

It’s unrealistic (and un-American) to abandon a burning ship. We’re Americas and no mater how fast our ship might sink to us the rest of the world is a sea full of rats. We stand by our flag until the end and fill ourselves with rage and cynicism. And I’m ready for that anger. I’m ready to live through Nixon and come out the other side, more aware than ever of the lies we’re told and the brown people we’ve killed. I’m ready to become Thompson and Ginsberg and the Beatles fueled by injustice and absurdity. I want to suffer all the slings and arrows of this once great nation. I want to feel alive if not through jubilation and joy than through suffering and martyrdom.

Even now if Bush were to apologize I’d forgive him. If America were to apologize I’d forgive them too. And if not… Well, by 2040 it’s expected the whites will be a minority race, the country will be hot and ugly, with luck California will be gone to Arizona Bay and if not maybe we’ll have at least found some way to fix Ohio once and for all. And I’ll still be here, 55 years old and angry as hell.

“He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”
-Herman Melville