Hope & Fear

Listening to Barack Obama, I discover that I am feeling -- fear. I am afraid to hope. Some of this may be due to my personal circumstances, but much is, I believe, due to long years of observation of American public life.

This is not the first candidate in my lifetime to speak of hope; we had the president from Hope, Arkansas.

I remember being in Santa Fe in the spring of 1992, mourning the death of a friend, listening to the radio, when President Clinton came on the air. He was speaking about domestic violence, and I wept. Grief, yes -- and hope. I suddenly felt, this is not only the President; this is my President. This President speaks to the issues and the people close to my life. This is the first president to have done so.

When my President was discovered to be a sexual predator, the disillusion was intense. Now, I know well that a sexual predator is rarely only that. He may be an intelligent and complex person, and even a relatively good president -- but also, still, a predator. The betrayal felt personal; that a man who won my vote at least partly due to his commitment to women's rights lived his life with such disregard for the most personal of those rights.

And I had learned long before to beware the man with honey in his mouth. But -- that's a different issue, another story.

I have experienced political hope before, younger. In my teens, JFK was president. Then there was the long, dark week, the whole country grieving.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the beacon a few years later. Courage, daring, hope re-lit -- and grief and rage to follow. Then Bobby Kennedy. I was not a supporter, but still, I felt -- intensely -- the killing of yet another light. The dangers of a strong voice; the precarious call to change.

So I listen to Obama, and I fear my own capacity to believe, to hope. I am not speaking of reason, here; of the arguments for experience, for and against incremental versus deep change; the concerns inherent in yet another candidate who presents himself as an inspirational rather than an executive, managerial leader. These are important arguments, and I don't discount them.

But Obama speaks to that part of me that believes -- that wants to believe -- in my country, in my Constitution, in the values -- equality, freedom, opportunity, community -- with which I was raised. Those crucial, but elusive, principles we are, presumably, striving for, and standing on.

Strong as stone, fragile as gauze, those principles; so easily bent, distorted, ignored.

Especially when, as Obama points out, we are afraid.

So why is it that when I listen to those on the right, who try to frighten me with apocalyptic images, I feel only disgust and contempt for such political maneuvering; but when I listen to Obama speak of hope and change, I feel fear?

I fear disappointment, disillusionment, and violence against this man who calls us to be our best. I fear another loss, another national loss. It is possible to murder hope; some deep part of me believes this.

Why is it not possible to murder despair?

Comments

[Julie Carter]

Obama is the first candidate I've ever felt hopeful about, but my hope isn't without its terrors. Daring to hope means daring to be crushed by an outcome. It means we can be betrayed. I'd rather be shot than betrayed.

But I've made the leap. I don't know that there's a net under there, but I'm going to go for it. I decided that I'd rather splat on the ground than wish I had helped.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

[Jillian]

Hello, this is gorgeous prose. I relate intimately to this sense of fear.

[Judith]

Dear Sharon, Michelle Obama has told us "We have great work to do together. Do not be afraid." Maybe courage is to replace hope, so, I wish you courage. Judith