The Shock and Awe of It All

This will be the last political post for perhaps some time as I seek to re-transition myself and the blog to other, more pressing matters like design, the use of the color brown, the latest Palm handheld, and the dearth of good museums today.

Actually, I don't mean to jest. Politics, for almost everyone I know, has taken center stage in their lives and the way they live, act, work, eat, and, probably, sleep. Some state it outright while others suffer quietly and with the conviction that others are enduring similar angst and dolor.

I think what I find most disquieting (pun intended) right now is the presence of tremendous -- but unexpected -- sadness among many I know and others I don't. It's as if no one expected Mr. Bush to win the election -- or if he did, that his winning would be less triumphant somehow. This inexplicable (to me) feeling of collective sorrow is not like anything else I can remember during my lifetime.

I certainly don't mean to act like some sensor of the collective masses -- though I aspire to be a kind of psychic sponge that assesses the mood ring color of the totality of the populace. And, if anything, I'm projecting my something onto others' nothing. Yet, I can't help but think that the sorrow I'm seeing (on magazines, in friends, at gatherings) is the sense that an era has ended -- an era of New Deal sentiment and policy that helped drive such sentiment into our communal core. It's not about liberals or progressive or democrats or independents; it's about gentleness, thoughtfulness, and justice and the expectation that those values were in the hearts and minds of other U.S. citizens.

It turns out that those expectations are dashed and our senses about the future of hope -- are dashed.

Posted by Andrew at November 8, 2004 7:46 PM