I can't say I was an Obama supporter before, nor that I am one now. But I suspect I may be well on my way to being one. (It's not that I was for anyone else - my friends and I have tried in vain to like Hillary, and Edwards talks the talk, but I've been pretty disengaged.) I wasn't for Obama before because Paul Krugman's been hammering away at his proposals for health care, etc., which seem too centrist - but mainly because I didn't take his candidacy seriously. I guess I wasn't audacious enough to hope.
A black man president of the United States of America? I still can't quite believe he's real - that voice, strangely deep for someone so young; that intonation, too unself- consciously oratorical for this century; those words, more moving than they have any right to be, resonating with hopes one had forgotten one had ever dared to entertain... as if we could live in history, a history of growing justice and moral progress, and were not condemned to wander its disillusioned aftermath. (What he would or could accomplish is another question. "Change" and "hope" are pretty vague, and the next president has to pick up the pieces after eight years of the Bushies' squander, desecration and pillage.)Just imagine if his were America's face to the world, and to itself! It's like something out of science fiction or something. He's like something out of science fiction. But I could live in a country which elected this man, and proudly... Not just with pride, but (as he mentions) with love. It is something like love! It's scary, it's exhilarating, it feels partly irrational. Is it him or the idea of him? Is it him or the country which has made him possible, the country he makes possible? As promised, I'm babbling so I'll stop. For now.
("Barrack" is an Australian sports verb, used as in the American "root" of "I'm rooting for X to win." "Root" has a different meaning in Australia.)
