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ELECTION RESULTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nov. 5th, 2008 06:13 pmOH THANK [INSERT DEITY/HIGHER POWER/EXPLETIVE OF YOUR CHOICE] FOR THAT.
Really. I know the polls predicted it but I didn't trust them after the illegalities of the last two and just...just...hope is fragile and I honestly felt like I had to convince myself losing was a possibility or I wouldn't be able to handle the crushing despair that would take me if it happened against the odds.
I was too afraid to take it for granted. So I'm just...massively massively relieved.
Like there's an actual feeling of adrenaline-relief going through my entire body, and I don't think I realised I was quite so consciously blocking feeling anything about it until it was over.
It's so weird to have a President I think was put into office legally.
I always loved that line, "I might not have voted for him, but he's my President," (though clearly not enough to remember who said it) as a way of approaching the idea that you can still expect your President to be responsible and honourable and good at the job even if it wasn't the President you hoped for (and conversely I guess it can be used to suggest that you need to shut up and support everything that President does, but I don't like thinking about it that way).
It was a really weird day when I realised that I didn't feel that way about George Bush. I didn't feel like I could claim him as my President because I didn't think he was anyone's President. Our President was elsewhere.
It's sort of weirder to now feel that there's someone in that office who is my President.
Yeah. It's...a sense of slightly dazed wonder that democracy worked this time and massive, massive relief.
Anyway, I'll end there. Everyone and their dogs are making posts about this, but that's as it should be.
ETA: So I finally got to watch Obama's victory speech. It was a good speech. I actually cried which makes me feel sort of dorky because while I cry at the drop of a hat, usually not about like, at speeches that I'm acutely aware are very cleverly crafted and think are about 50% excellent and 50% very cheesy.
Partly it was that "tears of joy brought on by adrenaline and emotional-all-over-the-placeness." I think it was also just because it kind of hit me how enormously huge this is, that I actually helped somehow, and that it's both wonderful and absolutely fucking terrifying.
Wonderful for obvious reasons; terrifying because it's so big. The everything's such a mess, the job is so huge, and it seems so impossible. I think true, honest hope goes hand in hand with terror. Because if there's no real and frightening chance that you might fail, it's not really hope, it's just an expectation.
I think perhaps this is the first time I've felt safe enough to really consider having hope, and the enormity, and, yes, to steal a quote, the audacity of that are...enough apparently to reduce me to tears.
Really. I know the polls predicted it but I didn't trust them after the illegalities of the last two and just...just...hope is fragile and I honestly felt like I had to convince myself losing was a possibility or I wouldn't be able to handle the crushing despair that would take me if it happened against the odds.
I was too afraid to take it for granted. So I'm just...massively massively relieved.
Like there's an actual feeling of adrenaline-relief going through my entire body, and I don't think I realised I was quite so consciously blocking feeling anything about it until it was over.
It's so weird to have a President I think was put into office legally.
I always loved that line, "I might not have voted for him, but he's my President," (though clearly not enough to remember who said it) as a way of approaching the idea that you can still expect your President to be responsible and honourable and good at the job even if it wasn't the President you hoped for (and conversely I guess it can be used to suggest that you need to shut up and support everything that President does, but I don't like thinking about it that way).
It was a really weird day when I realised that I didn't feel that way about George Bush. I didn't feel like I could claim him as my President because I didn't think he was anyone's President. Our President was elsewhere.
It's sort of weirder to now feel that there's someone in that office who is my President.
Yeah. It's...a sense of slightly dazed wonder that democracy worked this time and massive, massive relief.
Anyway, I'll end there. Everyone and their dogs are making posts about this, but that's as it should be.
ETA: So I finally got to watch Obama's victory speech. It was a good speech. I actually cried which makes me feel sort of dorky because while I cry at the drop of a hat, usually not about like, at speeches that I'm acutely aware are very cleverly crafted and think are about 50% excellent and 50% very cheesy.
Partly it was that "tears of joy brought on by adrenaline and emotional-all-over-the-placeness." I think it was also just because it kind of hit me how enormously huge this is, that I actually helped somehow, and that it's both wonderful and absolutely fucking terrifying.
Wonderful for obvious reasons; terrifying because it's so big. The everything's such a mess, the job is so huge, and it seems so impossible. I think true, honest hope goes hand in hand with terror. Because if there's no real and frightening chance that you might fail, it's not really hope, it's just an expectation.
I think perhaps this is the first time I've felt safe enough to really consider having hope, and the enormity, and, yes, to steal a quote, the audacity of that are...enough apparently to reduce me to tears.
