I’d love to change the world.
But I don’t know what to do.
So I’ll leave it up to you
This 1971 song by Ten Years After sprung to mind recently, and I found the chorus unfortunately pertinent. Except for the lazy “So I’ll leave it up to you” part.
Ten years after. It got me to thinking … what about 10 years before?
Ten years ago there was a youngish African American man making noise in the democratic presidential primaries and about to capture the party’s nomination. Here was a man few had heard of, and even fewer gave much of a chance to win. His name: Tracy Morgan. I kid, of course.
Ten years ago, my sons were but seven and two respectively, today they are well … 10 years older. But they often still act seven and two. Movie theaters featured WALL-E, the first Iron Man (before the 12 sequels and 87 other movies in the “Marvel Universe”), Kung Fu Panda, the rare boring James Bond movie, Quantum of Silence, the sublime Tropic Thunder and Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, which was apparently more of an autobiography than anyone realized at the time.
On TV, Lost was entering its fourth engagingly murky year, The Wire was wrapping up while Breaking Bad was just starting its brilliant run. And who could forget Swingtown? Most everybody, in fact.
The Giants (the other ones) beat the Pats in the Super Bowl with the incredible helmet catch, the Phillies won the World Series, the Red Wings lifted the Stanley Cup, the Celtics were NBA champs and the Olympics were held in Beijing, or so we were told. Hard to be sure with all the smog.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve lost an appendix (really, I am so careless sometimes), my brother and a dear personal friend. I’ve written hundreds of these little columns, I’ve enjoyed six world championships by our local NBA and MLB teams, I found the love of my life, her kids, my dream house and a not-too-mid-life crisis convertible.
My health is good, my work is fairly exciting, and I still live in idyllic Sonoma County, although the fires, homelessness and the astounding lack of affordable housing puts a bit of a damper on that situation. And alas, I am also in the midst of an 18-month long funk.
As I look back with mud-smeared glasses, 2008 feels like a more innocent time. Back then I poked fun at Mr. Obama and his “Hope We Can Believe In” slogan. I laughingly attacked that cursed dangling preposition, if you’ll pardon my language.
Yet my most pointed barbs were reserved for John McClain’s’ running disaster … I mean running mate, Sarah Palin, and her daily incoherent ramblings. Today I long for a time when the most ridiculous comment uttered by a politician was something on the order of Palin’s infamous “Obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.” Which, depressingly, seems prescient in hindsight.
Most tellingly, 10 years ago we experienced a presidential campaign run not in the swampy trenches of vicious name-calling and juvenile behavior, but mostly focused on ideas, vision and policy talk.
Sure it was easy to ridicule Palin, but Obama and McCain kept their respective grace and dignity, for the most part. McCain even reprimanded a campaign rally attendee who called Obama an Arab.
To his eternal credit and reflective of his character, Senator McCain took the mic from the woman and said, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not an Arab.”
Were we ever so young?
What happened to us in such a relatively short time? How did we fall so low and be so willing to accept such disgraceful behavior from our alleged leaders?
The so-called silent majority is neither silent nor a majority; they represent the worst of what we are, not the best. It’s time, past time in fact, to take back our country from these short-sighted, thin-skinned, narrow-minded extremists; time to take back our democracy, founded not on the almighty dollar, but on this simple, yet powerful statement of inclusion: “We the People of the United States.”
Ring a bell?
We deserve better. We demand better. We desperately need better. I’d love to change the world, and I do know what to do.
I think you do, too.
Steven welcomes your comments. You can reach him at st***************@gm***.com.
