I am a transplanted Texan in New York City, I was here on 9/11 (I link to your 9/11 post on the anniversary every year because it so closely resembles my experience and is so much better written than anything I could produce) and I have felt besieged in the years since that awful day because my friends and loved ones back home never asked me then or now about my experiences. They only want to talk AT me about what they think it all means. Their politics is always like that. They would rather tell me why I am wrong (and going to hell) than have a conversation wherein we have a rational exchange of ideas and perhaps shift each others conclusions a little bit.

The prospect of an Obama presidency has driven my family truly insane. My parents aren’t coming to visit me here in New York City because they can’t bear the thought of visiting such an “anti-American” part of America. My mom told me yesterday – her voice cracking on the edge of tears – that she was scared of what an Obama Administration will do to people like her and my father. Without saying it, I know she meant “white.”

Such thinking will not change at first, I fear, because it can’t break through the self-imposed filter of Limbaugh/Hannity/FOX hatred & lies. It will take time and it will never succeed fully, especially as long as a demagogue like Palin is out there whipping up the orcs, but I hope that the rift in my family can be repaired along with the nation.

Thank you once again for your beautiful post.

9/11 gave Bush and the Republicans a wave of support they could never have earned in any other way. It also cowed Democrats up to and including the 2004 election.

This year is, then, a course correction. We are back where we were headed before Monica and back to where we would have been moving before 9/11.

Obama says…”Let’s return to our best traditions”. I can dig that!

First, I wrote a post a while back wondering if one day Karl Rove wasn’t in some hotel bar with another political operative, and cocky Karl said, I’ll bet you $1.00 that I can get the most stupid man in America elected President (ala “Trading Places”). I’d say he won the bet.

Now on to my more direct thoughts on your post. Over a year ago I read an on-line article (which to this day I could find again). I don’t even remember who wrote it, but the author talked about how we are going through (the whole world) one of the major cyclical changes that the world goes through every so often.

He talked about how it scares people (generally afraid of change as it is) to see such dramatic changes, and so groups of the population want to pull back from the precipice and return to idealized version of a past time. Like now, with the evangelicals in America wanting to return to back alley abortions and gay people back in their closets, and blacks in their neighborhoods and whites in the suburbs.

The author remarked that it has, througout history, resulted in very dark times during the transition, but it was always better once we got on the other side. He seemed to think that this generation would not see us get to the new order, and maybe we won’t, but I think the technologies driving the new communications methods and such may be accelerating the process more than in the past.

As everyone above agrees, keep hope alive, but realize that groups of the population will resist the change, sometimes to the point of violence…and their desperation will only grow over time.

It was “tweety”. I found that statistic facinating as well.

Has MSNBC become the liberals FAUX news?

Whomever it was said that you have to go back to 1928 to find a winning GOP ticket that did not include a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket. I believe he meant it as a comment on the POTENTIAL failure of the McCain campaign. I took it as a sign of hope for the future … assuming we can keep Jeb out of the ring.