Jubilation

We all woke up to a better world on November 5th (if we slept at all on Tuesday night). I am jubilant. Thrilled. Euphoric. Gleeful. Americans have chosen Barack Hussein Obama to be President of the United States. As I heard a young woman quoted the other day, "I feel like I want to wake up my neighbors and hug them."

I wanted to commit my jubilation to writing immediately, while my and the world's sense of elation was fresh. Impressively, the euphoria I felt when the Obamas walked to the front of the stage in Chicago has not faded. I remain jubilant days later. I am trying to savor for as long as possible the complete exhilaration of this historic turn of events. I have done little reading for my classes all week. Instead I have been replaying Obama's victory speech, savoring his eloquence, clarity, and awareness; I have been scouring the internet reading amazing after amazed headline; I have been clicking through a hundred images of the Obamas on election night on the campaign's flickr site. Mostly I have been calling and emailing my friends who are in the United States. Everyone is giddy.

Perhaps I spent these last few days pouring over articles and talking to friends because I needed proof: I needed to see it again and again to believe it. Barack Obama’s election was too momentous to sink in immediately. I realize I reacted similarly to a horrifying—not glorious—event this summer when one of my best friends was killed suddenly in a tragic accident. I spent the moments and days after her death reading the newspaper headlines, talking to our friends, and crying. I struggled to comprehend that something so big and irreversible had actually occurred. I was thinking of my friend on election night. I wish she could have seen Obama elected. She had more faith in people than I did, and we had both supported him for so long.

Before I convinced myself that it was all true, that America had indeed elected a thoughtful, analytic, minority president, all I could manage to do was make my way slowly home on Wednesday morning as if in a fog. I wondered if I had dreamt it. After all, the long election night was surreal. I watched the election with an American friend and a roomful of international classmates in her flat in a converted warehouse in a Turkish neighborhood of East London. In addition to my American friend, I was with her English boyfriend, a German man, an Englishman of Indian heritage, a Canadian woman, and a Romanian man. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world was watching the American election.

I brought bottles of champagne to the revamped warehouse on Stoke Newington high street. The German watched me carefully place them in the fridge and smirked, "Champagne, huh. That seems remarkably confident." I looked at him nervously. I can't deny I felt anxious. He asked me what I intended to do if we had no cause to open the champagne at the end of the night. I admit I didn't know. I paused as if to buy time, to think of an answer or to assuage my fears. My eyes swept across the wide wooden floors, searching somehow for inspiration under the plants in the corner, or from the cat perched on the shelf. We were standing on the second floor of the converted warehouse and I gazed down as if into the abyss to the first floor. A few Moroccan pillows lay on the cement. I surveyed the distance and my eyes lit on the railing. "Well," I answered him; "I'll probably drink a lot of something else and then desperately throw myself off of this railing." I think its interesting that this sarcasm and cynicism that I have developed, which are integral parts of my personality, have been formed in part as a coping mechanism in response to the style of politics my country has been trapped in for as long as I have been learning how to evaluate the political landscape.

I never allowed myself to seriously entertain the possibility of McCain and Palin winning this election. I tried once or twice to consider that scenario, but when I pictured McCain--or worse, Palin--on a podium representing the will of America, I felt a knot in my stomach and a weight pressing down on me from all angles, the same heavy feeling I get when about to face something very terrifying, like flying or snakes. I had to banish the thought, the possibility, and the accompanying sinking sensation from my mind.

America has a resilient system of government. It is a strong but elastic system, and it can sustain a series of bad leaders...but it cannot endure forever. Everything has a limit. I feared that after almost thirty years of, as Judith Warner writes in a moving blog post "....An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as small-town decency," something would snap. Like the purple silly putty I had as a child that I would pummel in my hands, grab from both ends, and abuse and threaten to stretch to the limits. I feared the system and the country would collapse like the bridge in Minnesota.

I held only a vague notion of what I might do if Obama lost. Especially if the majority of people voted for him, but the republican political machine had managed to steal it away, perhaps I would have given up on democracy altogether, taken up Abdullah's marriage proposal, and become a subject of the Kingdom of Jordan.

In retrospect I recognize that, as much as I hoped against hope that Americans would in the end choose maturity, tolerance, and a leader who speaks to people like they are adults, in the back of my mind I must have been bracing myself for the unthinkably illogical if only subconsciously in my preparations to come study in London. In my last post I alluded to having fled the country and I realize now just how true that was. First and foremost I wanted to put some distance between my family and myself, but I also wanted a European perspective on international relations. I wanted to afford health care. I wanted to see if my [ironically] Red state’s vilification of socialism and cosmopolitanism had even a shred of any basis in reality. I wanted to see if the European Enlightenment had anything to offer now. It is a pity I felt I could not find these things in the United States.

All of these reasons, worries, and fears evaporated when the Obama family walked to the front of the stage in Chicago. I burst into tears. I cried throughout his victory speech. I was so moved and so relieved that so many people would make prejudice irrelevant, would choose maturity over intolerance. I finally DID feel that America was a place where all things are possible. I had learned this in theory from my well-meaning seventh grade social studies teacher, but even then as I sat in a crumbling rural school from which few people went to college I had my doubts, and I suspect my social studies teacher did too, as to how well this worked in reality. Barack Obama’s pretty prose would be eloquent if his speeches were given by a monarch who has had the world handed to him, but Barack Obama’s speeches are inspiring because his background gives them weight. I am tremendously moved to see evidence that one can arrive with no political advantage, work hard, and on merit build one’s own connections.

When Barack Obama’s win was announced, I was jubilant that people were inspired to do the right thing. Even John McCain managed to do the right thing in his gracious concession speech, and in his quieting of his less gracious crowd of supporters. At this point I think I have read enough history to suspect that choosing to do the right thing occurs rarely enough that witnessing it is being part of an earth shattering moment of history. I wish I could have been in DC to share that moment, but it doesn’t matter, the whole world WAS watching and in the flat in London we jumped around giddily, poured my glasses of champagne, and hugged each other. I kissed the German man on his cheek, and wet his face with all of the tears streaming down my own. My friend and I danced around, almost tripping over the Moroccan puff pillows, clutching each other to avoid falling. This morning I was reading a spread about Obama in Time magazine, and I was moved all over again by the way Nancy Gibbs captured the spirit of election night, remarking that "…An election in one of the oldest democracies looked like the kind they hold in brand-new ones, when citizens finally come out and dance, a purple-thumb day, a velvet revolution."

Winston Churchill once said, "America can always be counted upon to do the right thing...after it has exhausted all other possibilities." Even though Barack said in his victory speech that “This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change,” the election of the first black President of the United States is in and of itself a lasting political change with enormous positive implications. Of course there are many challenges ahead, but the whole world has breathed a sigh of relief. It is refreshing to see the most powerful country act sensibly. Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist said of Obama's election, "The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason...the alienation of the world is not only because the U.S. has been so unilateral but also because the unilateral choices have often been so dumb."

I didn't realize to what degree my political coming-of-age has been inextricably bound up with the Bush administration. I didn't realize to what extent those policies have formed my opinions and informed my career choices and my job searches. I realized with surprise and something akin to ecstasy that now I would be excited to work for a Barack Hussein Obama administration! I would gladly work for the Foreign Service in the State Department if they would take me, or for other departments of the government of the United States of America. I had never considered these options seriously before. It really opens up my career opportunities, and that’s one more reason to smile.

Since I have been in London I have been meeting new people daily. We tend to have the same conversation repeatedly, usually involving questions like “What’s your name again? I didn’t catch that [over the loud music and chatter in a crowded pub]. What do you study? Where are you from?” Until November 3rd I tended to answer sheepishly, quietly saying, "I am...um...well...I am...from the United States." I would brace myself for negative reactions or snide comments, deserved or not. On November 5th I wanted to shout gleefully, "I'm AMERICAN!!!! Isn't it GREAT!!!!???" To quote Michelle Obama’s controversial but in my opinion deeply patriotic comment, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” I have never been so proud to be American.

As I rode the train into central London yesterday almost every single passenger was reading the paper, plastered with photos of Obama–and almost everyone reading it was smiling, or had a smile in their eyes. And this can be a dark and dreary city, though I love it, where people smile infrequently, and even more rarely at Americans. At least for now the whole world is smiling at America. I got an email from a German friend that read, "Congratulations on electing President Obama! Yes, it really is good to see that the real US of A is back! I hope that other countries around the world - European ones included -will take note of such as engaged democratic election that has really resurrected the belief that people can effectively influence politics with their votes. Along with everything else Obama has redefined with his campaign - what a way to bid the Bush years good-bye. I hope the parties continue for some time yet!"

Perhaps that is why I am only now committing my thoughts to writing. I've been busy attending victory parties!!! The Democrats Abroad hosted an event at the "Texas Embassy," an American bar/restaurant near Westminster, a few nights ago. People were jammed into the upstairs with no space to move. Everyone was abuzz and beaming. A string of Obama's portraits on laser printer papers adorned the room with the words "Hope" printed repeatedly beneath his face. Also, as much as I hate to imply that this was different before, I could not help but notice that every single white person in the room looked at every single black person with absolute and complete respect, and everyone stood a bit taller for it. A woman sang the Star Spangled Banner. We all joined her. On November 5th my English friends hosted a Guy Fawkes Day party—a celebration of the capture of one of the world’s first terrorists who intended to blow up the House of Lords and kill the King in 1605. There were fireworks in accordance with the tradition but all that anyone could talk about was Barack Obama. It felt as if the fireworks were in honor of a renewed United States.

What a week. What a celebration. I still feel euphoric, elated, jubilant. The name Barack means "blessed" in Swahili and it comes from the Arabic root "baraka" which means depending on the forms "to invoke a blessing; to give one’s blessing, sanction; to be blessed; to enjoy, find pleasure, delight in” etc. I am certainly delighted and while I'm not one to invoke the language of religion in politics I do feel blessed this week. I have a new faith in humanity. I really do. God Bless America indeed. Ba'rock the vote, as we young people like to say. Or perhaps just Thank God, Alhamdullilah, Change has come to America.