Hope vs. Fear

I don’t think that I’m going to be able to write an in depth piece regard­ing the elec­tion; but I do want to get some of my thoughts down. To that end:

In all hon­esty, Barack Obama wasn’t my first choice dur­ing the pri­maries. The truth is, despite the cries of “most lib­eral Senator” (wait wasn’t that Kerry 4 years ago), and “social­ist,” Barack Obama isn’t lib­eral enough for me. Seriously, to me, “social­ist” is a good thing. Nonetheless, when it became appar­ent that the pri­mary race was down to Clinton and Obama I resolved to sup­port either of them in the gen­eral elec­tion. Not because I have any real loy­alty to the Democratic party, but because I hon­estly feel that the coun­try can not sur­vive another four, let alone eight years of the poli­cies cur­rently espoused by the Republican party.

That being said. In the end I became an Obama believer. I think that the moment that it crys­tal­ized in my mind was Obama’s accep­tance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Here was a can­di­date who was, for the first in a long time, preach­ing a mes­sage not of fear, but of hope. Now, it’s easy to make lofty procla­ma­tions in an accep­tance speech; but at every stage of the cam­paign, all the way to the his­toric speech that Obama gave last night, even in the midst of the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis Obama has spread a mes­sage of hope.

Hope in the inher­ent good­ness of all the peo­ple of this coun­try, not just those who share his ide­ol­ogy. Hope in future, which is ripe with oppor­tu­ni­ties to forge a truly great “new American cen­tury.” And hope that, together, we can be a great peo­ple once again.

And how did the McCain cam­paign respond to this mes­sage of hope? They responded in clas­sic Karl Rove style: Fear. Fear that a Black man, with a funny sound­ing name must surely be up to some­thing nefar­i­ous. Fear that the limp wristed pan­sies of the Democratic party wouldn’t have the moxie to defeat a bunch of ter­ror­ists. And fear that, appar­ently zom­bie Karl Marx was going to come around and “redis­trib­ute” all your pre­cious “wealth.”

Here’s a hint for Mr. Rove. People can only live in fear for so long. Sooner or later, hope tri­umphs. It always does.