The World Turned Right Side Up

Posted on October 23, 2008 in Anxiety Campaign 2008 Depression Uncertainty

At the British surrender at Yorktown, the band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. Then as now a transfer of power took place. Certainly among the Americans — many of whom had been fighting for years — there must have been a difficult period: how do you go from being a warrior to a citizen? There were issues to be resolved such as the status of those who had supported the British, but nothing was so important and devastating to the morale of those men as the question of how to be in this new world.

The rush of history has my mind put in a blender for reconstitution. For the last several years — dating from before Bush became president — progressives have been staving off hateful attacks from the right. They are at their worst today: we are accused of being unpatriotic, of not loving our country. It’s the whole Bush Adminstration plus the Clinton impeachment concentrated into a bitter slushee that we are forced to swallow.

I have watched as some of the more sensitive of those on the Obama side have devolved into one of three moods: anxiety, depression, and grandiosity. The anxiety is easy to understand: the election is not yet won and the Republicans have been filling our ears and eyes with false information and character assassinations. If they can’t steal the election, they have been engaging in shenanigans designed to narrow the gap so the Democrats can’t claim a mandate for change. We are just not there yet.

Likewise, the grandiosity is easy to understand. We’re about to win, it seems, and win big. Therefore we are the best people in the world, chosen by God or the Universe or common sense. We know everything, can solve everything. So these among us stand on pedestals and lecture our peers on the way it is going to be. Doggoneit, they say, we have the key to convincing the most diehard Republicans to join us. We are unstoppable.

I figure I’ll just have to live with that for a few years. Believe me, it will be as insufferable for a few of we progressives as well as the defeated right, if for different reasons. Reality will click in and these will either come to walk with the rest of us on or fall into the ennui from listening to their own voices without insight.

Which brings us to depression. How can that be afflicting progressives at a time like this? I’ll tell you: first, the anxiety wears us down. Exhaustion claims us. So we lose all pleasure, all sense of accomplishment. There is also, second, the exhaustion of feeling obligated to answer every attack slung out by the McCain/Palin machine.

The third cause of depression stems from uncertainty. Now that we are about to win, what kind of political personality are we going to adopt? Since the late 90s, that has been one that constantly attacks the failed and repulsive premises of the neoconservatives. It’s been fun, but soon, with responsibility, that fun is going to stop. The problem with Republican rule is that it has been so founded on negativism, it failed to create positive institutions or freedoms. The same must not be allowed to happen in a Democratic era — though we may wisely be ready to fend off attacks as we strive to solve the crises that the Bush Administration has left behind. But change in political power is going to mean change in our attitudes. We are going to have to become compromisers, optimists. And some folks are as unready to make that change as Palin is to be vice president.

I am taking the following steps to mind my spiritual transition. First, for the duration of the election, I am keeping my consumption of television news to a minimum, which means I’m not watching it in my home and avoiding it outside. All the bells and whistles of your typical television news screen agitate me. The reporters spout out opinions. Inside their opinions are little assumptions that eat at me like acid.

Second, I am making time to do things that are fun. Walking the dog. Going to the beach. Relaxing with good books. Taking pictures and looking over what I have done previously.

Third, I am sharing every bit of positive news I can find. I am also seeking out news that is not about the election, funny videos, etc.

Fourth, I’ve made myself a promise: when and if Obama wins — yes, I am sticking to the conditional at this moment — I am going out to buy a new American flag and hang it outside to celebrate that I am once again included in this country.

The world will be turned upside down which means right side up for the first time since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980. That is something to cheer for, something to shed the shackles of low moods for. Yet, after the cheering, must come reality. This vote is not about making every man a king, every woman a queen, but about becoming citizens instead of serfs. The notion to come is equality, which is about dignity. That will have to be reforged in the new fires of an unexpected community.