THIS MODERN WORLD

I’m having a hard time expressing in words how I feel right now. On the one hand, the election of Barack Obama is one of the great moments in our nation’s history. As my mother said last night “Save your papers tomorrow morning to pass on to your children and grandchildren.” Obama’s landslide victory serves as a mirror-image and bookend of sorts to the last American experience that was this universal and emotionally-resonant, 9/11. The dreadful shadow of fear, confusion, and anger that has defined the last seven years has given way to a new sense of unity, optimism, and patriotism. It’s been a privilege to be a part of this moment.

With so many great things to say about this election, I can’t help but dwell on the fact that Prop. 8 has passed. The fact that this failure was in “liberal” California was a crushing blow. Through shameful propaganda and the inadvertent assistance of the mushy-mouthed Democrats who tried to straddle both sides of this issue (I’m looking at you, Barack), bigotry has been enshrined into our state constitution. Thousands of marriages are going to be nullified because a slim majority of insecure strangers want their discomfort about homosexuality to be codified into law.

It’s hard to celebrate an Obama victory with this stunning reminder that Americans can still be small and bitter and hateful and cruel.

Krugman:

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

52% – 46% in the popular vote, nearly seven million votes ahead. In the electoral college, 349-173, with North Carolina still up in the air.

No margin of error this time around, no questions about Ohio, no fucking dimpled chads.

This is from a recent profile of Seymour Hersh:

[H]e is hopeful that Obama will pull it off, and if he does, for Hersh this will be a starting gun. ‘You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president’s inauguration],’ he says, with relish. ‘[They say:] “You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.”