Impress at the Empress

For Sunday, August 31, 2008


It felt good to be part of something big. I could have sat home, with the Mrs., comfortably on our couch, and watched on my big screen television Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s nomination to be their candidate for President of the United States. Instead, we accepted the invitation from the Empress Theatre in Vallejo to see it live with several hundred other hopeful Americans eager for change.
It felt good to be in a cheering crowd, shoulder to shoulder in firm agreement with white, black, Asian, Hispanic, young, old, and middle-aged Americans, veterans, teachers, nurses, clerks, and the desperate unemployed, all in love with our country, all hopeful for a fairer future for average-income Americans, all frustrated as an extended family, fed up with eight years of theft of our nation’s wealth, eight years of neglect of our nation’s needy, eight years of squandered potential.
It felt good to turn and hug my neighbors. It felt good to turn around and see Jerry Hayes and Bob and Carol Berman and Rich Friedman in the audience. We as hundreds applauded in unison. We roared in unison. We laughed in unison. We rose to our feet in unison and stomped our feet as powerful points were made by profound speakers, culminating with Barack bringing down the house. He reminded us concisely that when McCain’s Carl-Rovians attack Barack’s race, his name, his supposed celebrity, they are forgetting that the campaign is not about Obama; it’s about us. Americans.
It felt good to turn around and see a sea of people sick and tired of eight stolen years of fear, terror, arrogance, and cronyism. It felt good to see 80,000 others at the Mile-High Stadium in Denver, along with millions of republicans, democrats, and independents all over America in agreement finally that our country was not created to become a feeding trough for a handful of mega-wealthy, money-hungry families and corporations with the power to write their own laws and lobby their own favors. It felt good to see that a whole lot of people are angry enough to finally do something about it.
We may not have taken to the streets like the children of the ‘60s who protested the war in Viet Nam, but we are taking our disgust to the voting booths to fight for change, to force change, and to carefully monitor the enactment of change.
It felt good to believe in our souls that we were seeing the end of a dark age, a fear of science, a disregard for the destitute, a casting aside of our wounded veterans, an indifference to a crumbling infrastructure, and an end to self-serving attitudes like that of Dick Cheney, who so aptly showed his colors earlier this year when asked why he refused to change his deadly, destructive course in the Middle East when the vast majority of Americans opposed it; he replied with a monosyllabic, smug response of “So?” He elucidated by asking why should he change policy to meet the whims of changing public opinions?
Dick doesn’t get it. Elected officials are there to do the will of the people. If the vast majority say, “End the war,” it’s his civic duty to obey. That’s why they call politicians public servants. Cheney and gang obviously don’t see it that way. He was inserted there to do the will of those who need to leave trillions of dollars in their wills without any inheritance tax to recycle some of that ungodly wealth back into the system.
Yes, we’re going to run them out. I don’t think they’ll really mind it that much. They’ve already pilfered just about everything of value our nation has. Our country’s like a Quickie Mart after a rampant looting spree. There are a few stale doughnuts left in the corner, and couple cans of dented beets. The Bushwackers would just as soon get out now and wallow in their ill-gotten gains while someone else cleans up their mess.
I think back eight years ago when I wrote a column called Bushwacked. I said basically, “Oh, no. We’re screwed. Bush is going to muck everything up.” That column triggered several angry letters to the editor, one by someone I considered a close friend. He and a few others called me a fool and a rabble-rouser for even suggesting that our new Diebold-voting-machine-produced president would be anything less that the greatest leader in history.
Tonight, amidst the large crowd who gathered at the beautifully restored Empress Theater, 330 Virginia Street, where we can go to see amazing movies, live music, life performances, touring artists, and have cocktails with our popcorn, I felt duly vindicated. The bushwhack was real. It’s about to end. I feel grand. I wish I had been wrong. I wish I were a fool and a rabble-rouser.