Absurdity, Allegory and China

What a week! First the Phillies won the World Series, and now Barack Obama has won the US presidential election.  This blog usually deals with things nominally China, though there are times when I foul one off into the cheap seats, most notably regarding baseball. No apologies. I love the game despite the hyper-spectacle of ravenous commercialization and, generally, piss poor commentary. Beneath the bling of unfathomable money the game is still the game. But this one isn’t about baseball.

The one topic I have not dealt here has been the US elections, though not from lack of want. I’ve wanted to badly. In fact, so badly, I have exercised enormous restraint in order to remain nominally within the “Chinese box” that I have set myself in. But sometimes you just have to step out and swing at something else. Restraint has been particularly difficult for me over the past two-and-a-half months, particularly after John McCains’ cynical selection of his running mate, a choice that proved to the core that they didn’t “get it.” And ultimately this was their undoing.

A further mark of this disconnection was deeply embedded in John McCain’s concession speech.

“This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.”

The implications of this victory go far beyond the African-American community. They go to the very ideal heart of what America has imagined itself to be, even while it has not been. To explain that this victory has “special significance for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” proves that John McCain was fundamentally disconnected from what the United States has so desperately needed for as long as it has been a union. This was a victory of finally … finally rising above the empty rhetoric of high ideals. The United States can now say that it has squared itself with it’s Declaration of Independence where “all men are created equal,” and the subsequent terrible ’silence’ of the Constitution where it was agreed that a slave was valued at three-fifths of a white male, and then only for the white male’s benefit: as a deflated number to tax and choose representatives in a single race, single sex national congress. (This is hardly judging the past from the comfort of the present; our history tells us very clearly that the voices who railed against these terrible inconsistencies were vocal and many at the time that this was all being hashed, though for the sake of ‘unity’ they swallowed their tongues.) It’s not often that we get to clear an ‘ideal’ and say, “Finally, we’ve gotten over this one.”

Here in this time of national crisis, we ended up electing an African American as president, the son of an immigrant, the most qualified of those who desired the position. It’s taken 221 years and millions of lives tragically lost to acts of unspeakable inhumanity, in order to make the critical correction at arguably the lowest point in our history – after eight years of executive pillage and crimes – to reach the point where we can look past the chains that the founding fathers shackled all of us with, not just African Americans. We have all, every shade and color, been diminished by a belief in an ideal that fell critically short of realization. This victory was of “special significance” to all of us, even for those who don’t yet understand it as such. We have all, finally, been freed, and that speaks to the possibility of America, where a member of a 13% minority can be elected by a clear majority to lead us into a very shaky future.

Now begins the real work, which I hope we are all up to.