Sonja in the Netherlands sent me this...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5058369.ece
an excerpts here:
People can’t seem to quite grasp how the nation has got to where it now finds itself. Too many historic conjunctions. Some say that if Obama wins it will be in some ways a curse, because he would be presiding over a national mess. Others think it will be an opportunity to display heroic leadership.
There has been much talk about the role of race in this election. It is the most visible and at the same time the most invisible factor. One gets a sense that people don’t quite trust themselves and don’t know what they’ll do when alone with the ballot box. There seems something of a Jekyll and Hyde quality in relation to race; and no one knows which will vote on the day. It is as if the nation is hiding a guilty secret from itself, nursing unsuspected intentions. There are so many whisperings, perched between hope and anxiety. One gets the feeling of a people who went to bed in one room and woke up in another.
As the unthinkable moves slowly towards reality, will we have a chronicle of a victory foretold or another astonishing moment in which a nation stands aghast at what it never intended to do?
It is mainly because of Obama’s presence as a presidential candidate that this election has captured the imagination of the world. In a time when people no longer seem to dream great dreams, in which there are fewer great adventures of the spirit, in which we are on the whole encouraged to dumb down, to pursue populism, and to seek for the easy; in a time when celebrity is commonplace and cynicism a common fate, when to believe anything is to appear naive, to have a man who does not come from a powerful family and who above all is black, to have such a man running for the highest office in America is nothing short of an extraordinary act of the imagination.
In a sense it is one of the most audacious and inspiring stories of our age. Sometimes a single dream can compel people to hold their breath in wonder. God knows humankind needs such dreamers to remind us that we are not what we appear to be, but what we believe deep in our hearts we can be.
For me the conception alone was enough. But for Obama to go beyond conception on a long gruelling campaign, through the primaries against Hillary Clinton, and now to the final stages of a presidential dream against McCain is to have dragged the world from disbelief to the brink of conversion. We like people who set out on impossible journeys. They reawaken the sense of human greatness, which we appear to have forgotten in these dismal times.
an excerpts here:
People can’t seem to quite grasp how the nation has got to where it now finds itself. Too many historic conjunctions. Some say that if Obama wins it will be in some ways a curse, because he would be presiding over a national mess. Others think it will be an opportunity to display heroic leadership.
There has been much talk about the role of race in this election. It is the most visible and at the same time the most invisible factor. One gets a sense that people don’t quite trust themselves and don’t know what they’ll do when alone with the ballot box. There seems something of a Jekyll and Hyde quality in relation to race; and no one knows which will vote on the day. It is as if the nation is hiding a guilty secret from itself, nursing unsuspected intentions. There are so many whisperings, perched between hope and anxiety. One gets the feeling of a people who went to bed in one room and woke up in another.
As the unthinkable moves slowly towards reality, will we have a chronicle of a victory foretold or another astonishing moment in which a nation stands aghast at what it never intended to do?
It is mainly because of Obama’s presence as a presidential candidate that this election has captured the imagination of the world. In a time when people no longer seem to dream great dreams, in which there are fewer great adventures of the spirit, in which we are on the whole encouraged to dumb down, to pursue populism, and to seek for the easy; in a time when celebrity is commonplace and cynicism a common fate, when to believe anything is to appear naive, to have a man who does not come from a powerful family and who above all is black, to have such a man running for the highest office in America is nothing short of an extraordinary act of the imagination.
In a sense it is one of the most audacious and inspiring stories of our age. Sometimes a single dream can compel people to hold their breath in wonder. God knows humankind needs such dreamers to remind us that we are not what we appear to be, but what we believe deep in our hearts we can be.
For me the conception alone was enough. But for Obama to go beyond conception on a long gruelling campaign, through the primaries against Hillary Clinton, and now to the final stages of a presidential dream against McCain is to have dragged the world from disbelief to the brink of conversion. We like people who set out on impossible journeys. They reawaken the sense of human greatness, which we appear to have forgotten in these dismal times.
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