The Birth Of Hope

It's a wonder why I'm not already in bed.

Tomorrow should be a new day, full of hope. Maybe even a New World.

It's hard to imagine drastic changes in the Machine that makes the world turn, it is has more cogs and screws than you can throw a plumber at, be it Joe or any other. But there was one thing people needed more than change anyway, to keep this machine turning.

Hope.

Hope that everything's possible. That the strongest political machine can be defeated. That it isn't wrong to help others in need. That, albeit with a lot of effort, Right will triumph over Wrong in the end. That we will live to see another day. That reason can exist, coexist with and overcome unthought aggression and brash stupidity. That things can be better, and are going to.

Hope. Hope in the exact Machine we might have needed to stop believing in so we could be free. The Machine that crashed the markets so the already-rich could buy once-and-future cash cows at the lowest possible prices; the Machine that sent people to the poor house and seized their homes while people running for office can't even count the amount of property they own; the Machine that even French President Sarkozy said needed a complete overhaul.

Hope. The Rebirth Of Capitalism, Federalism, the American Dream (and the American Imperialism), hot dogs, baseball, 24-hour news networks with barely 5 hours of news on them; sounds a lot like the Clinton years, and we know what happened as soon as someone else took over.

And guess what? It's still a whole lot better than the alternative of more wars, more debt, less government intervention in the wrong (right?) places, more tax breaks for the rich, and possible setbacks in the areas of women's rights and civil liberties.

And here I hope: that Barack Obama really becomes what he says he will. He won't part the waters, won't even get nearly half the things done that need to be done; the Machine he's given us Hope in won't let him, it has mechanisms to keep him from changing too much of it, but here's Hoping the Machine doesn't rein him in and break him like it did John McCain in the past year.