What it feels like

I don't think it's possible to overstate the incredibly powerful, and positive, effect Obama's election has had on me.

There are several categories of things to think about and discuss in regard to this. Politics, ideology, race, etc. But for a moment, I want to focus on something else. And that is the feeling I have that something broken has been fixed.

I was 23 years old when the 2000 election happened. That was the first significant election I participated in as an informed and interested citizen and political junky- and it was the first serious clash of ideologies that I was part of. For obvious reasons, that was a very traumatic election. When it was over, I along with many Americans felt defeated and bewildered. The mechanics of our democracy had just failed us in a cynical way, resulting in the election of a man who- forget ideology- seemed like a genuine simpleton.

It was deeply troubling, and even confusing.

But I moved on, resigned to my fate, and things gradually melted back toward normalcy.

Then we had 9/11, and once again, we found ourselves in uncharted territory of the most dramatic order. The two biggest buildings in the biggest city in our country were torpedoed by a pair of passenger jetliners, and then collapsed in a display of such horrific intensity- in front of a watching world. And of course, we had the Pentagon and Flight 93 as well.

It was beyond unreal. It was a nightmare.

We rallied around the new president that we had been so skeptical to accept, and it didn't take long for the nightmare to continue to unfold, and deepen. Over the resulting years, the intense rush of support for America in the aftermath of 9/11 was replaced by revulsion and rejection at the consistent policies of ignorance, incompetence, and aggressive unilateralism that followed.

And ideology aside, many in the government seemed to be so clearly misrepresenting the threats we faced in the world, and encouraging people in our country to misunderstand the nature of the true threats we faced. Lies were spread; misconceptions fueled; ignorance and anger were celebrated and those who shook their heads and asked the simplest questions- why can't America choose to listen to the world, for example- were branded as traitors.

As the 2004 election loomed, it seemed pretty clear to me that the choice could not be starker: the Bush administration had proven itself a colossal failure, having failed in big ways and little ways, having failed at action, at words, and at reaching out to anyone other than the tight circle of loyalists, citizens, and media who signed on to its self-centered, inconsistent "ideology".

The Bush administration was operating on false premises and doing it incompetently. All of those who felt so robbed in 2000 had their chance to correct the aberration of that election. We were fired up. We had a war hero as our leader and draft dodgers, no less, as the incumbents.

When John Kerry failed to defeat George W. Bush in 2004, it was like waking up from a horrible nightmare to discover that the real world is even worse.

The fact that America was unable to turn away from Bush in 2004 was a serious blow to me. And the manner in which it happened- the swift boating, the demonizing of the opposition... it felt like the country really had gone insane. I mean, literally. We had a moron in the White House, presiding over a deepening series of crises, and a group of chickenhawk liers had somehow turned the fundamental truths of John Kerry inside out and used them to defeat him. And the country had signed on.

To make matters worse, the 2004 election told the world that, yep, America really was George W. Bush. He was no accident.

There's much to say about the continued- and hastened- pace of the nightmare following 2004. Hurricane Katrina would be a shining example. But I am feeling too drained to go into it. Suffice it to say, I had come to seriously doubt the fundamental sanity, intelligence, competence, and morality of our government. In profound ways. And the idea that it could be feasible to implement the magnitude of change we needed seemed exceedingly far-fetched.

I had lost hope.

The election of Barack Obama undoes all of that for me.

Put politics, ideology, race, etc. aside for a moment. All that really matters to me is that, when faced with the choice between continuing this nightmare for four more years, or forcing ourselves awake by making the most dramatic electoral statement in history, a record-breaking number of Americans chose to wake up.

So now we know. The past eight years actually were a nightmare. We are awake once again, and our country is as we always believed it was- and maybe even a little bit stronger for how we'll choose to act in it after having been through what we've been through.

I am under no illusion that we will not continue to endure tragedy and unspeakable challenges to our faith in ourselves. But now, for the first time in my life, I have lived through proof that we must all- all of us, even those descended from the slaves of Americans- never lose hope in America.