What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
-Langston Hughes
With all respect to Mr. Hughes, now we get to find out what happens when a long deferred dream is realized.
Feel free to add your own critically important questions. This is serious business. The candidate who answers best will win my vote!
I really should quit reading/writing about politics so much and get back to poetry. But:
What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
I wonder if this isn’t by itself enough reason to support Obama’s candidacy? Shouldn’t it at least be something American nationalists consider? Is the international prestige of the nation of no consequence? Perhaps not.
More fascinating than the lead Barack Obama holds over John McCain is where current President Bush sits. Below Dennis Kucinich. Oh, also a dead guy.
That’s right, there are three times as many people on Facebook willing to declare their support for the long dead first president of Turkey over the Leader of the Free World ™.
Also, I feel very sorry for the politician on Facebook with the least supporters, Stephen Chase of Canada. Last may he was re-elected to Saint John Common Council and no one even said anything! He has all of four supporters, which has got to be depressing, despite his wildly successful career. Well, thanks to my support, Mr. Chase has now moved into a tie for last place, rather than having it to himself. Be a Canadian patriot! Support Stephen Chase in his ride of the Facebook charts!
I am not writing this from a partisan perspective. I do not identify with either major US political party. But when I read of yet another shift in who the US military in Iraq considers most dangerous, I have to wonder, where does this end?
US forces have alternately identified Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militants as the greatest threats to peace in Iraq. It’s changed so many times I can’t help but feel at least a little sorry for John McCain, who can’t keep the differences straight in his head. The truth is, the vast majority of Americans would have no idea who the enemy of the moment was in the media didn’t keep them up to date. As for the actual theological or cultural differences between them? That’s too boring to cover. Irrelevant. They just hate each other.
When will it end? Will US forces simply keep yo-yoing back and forth, continually helping whoever is on the wrong end of the stick? Is it any wonder when civilians are killed in cases of mistaken identity? The average US citizen (left or right) just knows one enemy now: Iraqis. Ironic, isn’t it, since one of the stated goals of the original invasion was to “free the Iraqi people.” I don’t think anyone will end up any more free than when it began. Maybe the Kurds will, simply because no one bothers to notice them at the moment.
The whole thing sings of rotten ironies. The president who vowed to end nation-building (remember that, anyone?) has gotten the United States involved in possible the most complex and dangerous form of it. The war to bring freedom and democracy to an oppressed people looks more and more like something out of 1984. The calls to defeat the enemy and win the war at all costs begin to resemble the call of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness: “Exterminate the brutes.” Or even the Kurtz of Apocalypse Now: “Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all!”
I weep for the Iraqi child who does not understand why his world has gone crazy, why everything is coming apart around him. I do not write this as an American or one beholden to the Stars and Stripes. I write this as a child of God who sees only a multiplication of nakedness, hunger, and fatherlessness.
I have little in common with the current incarnation of the Republican party but typically less in common with the Democratic party. Reading the exit polls from the recent United States election suggests to me that most people had the corruption of those in power or the Iraq war in mind when they cast their votes, but one the one issue that stood first in importance to me was the dismal attitude prevailing in this country towards immigration.
From the ranting radio talk show hosts, from most of the people I work with, from even those at the highest levels of political power I have heard a view towards immigrants and immigration that can most accurately be summed up in one word: xenophobia. “An irrational fear of foreigners or strangers.” Has America forgotten her history? I constantly hear that Mexican immigrants (nevermind that they probably comprise only half of undocumented entrants into the US, it’s all the same to these people) are only here to steal, murder, sell drugs, live it up off of our tax dollars, and take the jobs of good, hardworking Americans.
The United States, in case you have forgotten, was founded by immigrants from Europe, immigrants who were fleeing poor economic and social conditions for the chance to work hard to establish a new life. And throughout its history, a continuous flow of immigrant populations have maintained the strength and soul of America. Each was looked down on and oppressed by those who were “born in America,” imagining that this coincidence of parentage made them somehow better. And each has contributed in vital ways to the growth of America’s economy and culture. Where would the United States be today without the Italians, Irish, Germans, and Chinese, to name just four influential groups? Not the seemingly unbeatable economic and political powerhouse it is today.
The rush to prevent immigration from occurring, whether by old policies of artificially low legal quotas for certain ethnic groups or by new ones like a 700 mile long wall that evokes images of a divided Berlin, is extremely worrisome.
I shudder to think of what will become of the United States if those in political power continue to stay the course of an immigration policy rapidly turning from bad to worse.