Politics, hope and humanity

Yeah, yeah, I know. More words on the photo blog. But like I said, sometimes I get moved and I can’t help myself. Because after all the rancor died down — rancor that I was a part of, I confess — I watched the debate tonight. And I was moved, I suppose, because I know what it feels like to watch the thing you want more than anything else slip away before your eyes. It’s a crappy feeling. And watching Hillary Clinton tonight, I was moved by memory. 

I feel bad about how personal this campaign has become. I think it reached a tipping point — and again, I confess to my part in that tipping point — in the last 48 hours. For me it came when I submitted a link on Digg and it reached the front page of election news. 

This was my first link on Digg to make it into double digits, and it got over 1,200 diggs. This was my first submission to even get a comment on it, and it got well over 100. But when I read those comments, I saw this race with somewhat new eyes. People in comments called the senator from New York “evil bitch,” “sleazy bitch,” “psycho,” “fiend,” “repulsive,” and “scum.”

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are human beings in this thing. When you talk about the Hillary campaign, the mechanism is so large as to crowd out the Hillary behind it all. And to that human being, the things happening are human things. I can barely imagine what it would feel like to be called “bitch” several hundred thousand times a day, although in all the scenarios I do imagine, it sucks. Hard. 

Two years ago I watched as a job I desperately wanted — a job I thought was a sure thing — slipped away from me in a week’s time. It hurt; there was anger; there was bargaining; there were tears. And watching the senator from New York tonight — especially as she delivered her closing statement — I felt touched by those memories. There was some anger. There was some frustration. But in the end, there was grace. And it moved me. 

Barack Obama makes much out of hope transcending politics, but tonight, for a moment, humanity transcended both. And for the first time in a long time, I felt at peace with it all. 

America ‘08.  

-j