Is this really a good idea? Jesus Christ! It feels like every one is setting him up for martyrdom.
I have a nightmare of waking up one day and seeing a black face shining with sweat on some television street in some television city, exclaiming with tears running down his face, "They killed him!!!"
We're desperate. We're hurting, and like desperate hurting people do, we're reaching for anything, anyone, which is not to say President Obama isn't worthy of our hope. It's only to say that we're putting all our eggs in his basket, painting a huge "S" on his chest, handing him a cape and saying, "Save us."
This ain't Metropolis, and he's not Superman.
Believe me. I feel it, too. Calling all the Ex-Presidents together like some superhero Justice League, riding the train, irritating his own party. I feel the hope, too.
But--
--the more perfect he seems, the more likable, the more golden, the more I worry.
What if something happens to him? What then? What happens to the rest of us? The race riots will eventually die down, but what happens to the economy? What we're feeling now, depression or recession, call it what you like, is just a pinch. While some of us are losing homes, going broke, searching for jobs, most of us are still treading water. If Obama gets assassinated, America is likely to become the United States of the Titanic.
Dubai will be the new capitol of the world. They will take our celebrities, and the celebrities will go with open arms, because in Dubai, they can shoot photographers if they feel like it. Okay, well, maybe they won't do that, but they can lock them up, deport them if they want, and that will make the celebrities happy. Wait, no celebrities, hmm, okay, so it's not all bad.
This is the part that gets me tagged with the FBI. This is the part that sends them and the Secret Service scurrying to my door with me stuttering and crying out to the media (if I'm lucky enough to get talk radio attention), "But--buh-buh-buh . . . it was only a BLOG!!!"
This is the part I call, "If I Were a Terrorist".
If I were a Terrorist, I'd be finding the next John Wilkes Booth, the next Harvey Lee Oswald (or well, anyone who uses all three of their names), and setting him up as the next patsy.
Which would have the most disastrous results? Taking down the Twin Towers of New York or having some Southern Racist assassinate the first black president?
Maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe I'm scared of nothing, but it feels like Obama is taking the same kind of chances that Kennedy and Lincoln took.
This is the part I will call, "If I were a Secret Service Agent"
To Do List:
- Hire and Train the shit out of more agents
- Corner the market on Teflon and Bullet-proof glass
- Buy Depends in patriotic colors.
People, most people, are basically good. We all want the same thing: to be happy. Most of us just want to get to work, do our jobs, get home and enjoy our lives, whether that's through a night dancing at a club, a quiet night with the family, an outdoor BBQ with neighbors or getting shitfaced on our front lawns.
But there's a lot of us in the world, enough to create a tiny percentage of us that are fucking nuts.
A rule of thumb about this whole "one person making a difference" crap.
To make a change for the better, it may take only one person or event to start the movement, but it takes a consistent effort by a shit load of people to carry the movement forward until it sticks.
But it only takes one, single nutcase to fuck everything up.
And now my own State of the Union address:
Folks, we're hoping things get better and we're struggling and putting a lot of faith in our new golden boy, rock hard abs, new puppy and all. This ain't Camelot. This is America. This isn't the Civil War. This is a united country that's accidentally put nearly the entire global economy into a tailspin. No one said it better than the Sargent on Hill Street Blues, and it's advice that goes for our new president as well as us:
"Let's be careful out there."
Aaron Diaz Hoal
1/18/09
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