Tonight is a remarkable night. It is, in the most significant sense of the word, history. And not history in the making, but history made. I will leave it to others to draw out what Obama's victory means in the long sweep of America life. For now, I have a take up at TAP that looks at what Obama's victory means in the context of recent American history, Namely, it's the end of the 9/11 era in our politics, the decisive repudiation of a politics in which fear was the dominant force:Barack Hussein Obama was, arguably, the country's most unlikely candidate for highest office. He embodied, or at least invoked, much of what America feared. His color recalled our racist past. His name was a reminder of our anxious present. His spiritual mentor displayed a streak of radical Afro-nationalism. He knew domestic terrorists and had lived in predominantly Muslim countries. There was hardly a specter lurking in the American subconscious that he did not call forth.And that was his great strength. He robbed fear of its ability to work through quiet insinuation. He forced America to confront its own subconscious. Obama actually is black. His middle name actually is "Hussein." He actually does know William Ayers. He actually was married by Jeremiah Wright. He actually had lived in Indonesia. These were not smears, though they were often used as such. They were facts. And this election was fundamentally about what happened when fear collided with fact.For the first time, America had to articulate what exactly it feared. Did it truly believe that the middle name "Hussein" suggested a terrorist threat to the country? Well, no. Did it genuinely think Obama a radical Afro-nationalist who had dedicated his life to serving a country he loathed? Probably not. Did it actually seem plausible that Obama wanted to become president so he could finish the job the Weathermen started? Unlikely. The shadowy terrors that animated American politics in the dark aftermath of 9-11 receded. Time had passed. To borrow a line, it was morning in America, and our country looked different in the clean light of the dawn. And so too did its problems. In 2008, America awoke to new anxieties. Concrete dangers. If the threat of shadowy terrorist networks is amorphous and hard to define, the dangers of an economic collapse are clear and easily explained, as is the horror of a city drowning while its government panics. There is nothing vague about the grim reality of a failed war nor anything ineffable in the relentless rise in health insurance costs. Like a hypochondriac who forgets his mysterious headaches when he must suddenly deal with his wife's cancer, America found there was plenty to worry about but little time to be afraid.The whole article is here.Image used under a CC license from BethCanPhoto.
