American Dreams

I said it before and I will say it again. I do not want to vote for Barak Obama. But I will, as selling my vote on e bay is not a viable option, neither is voting for a third party ticket or not at all. And, now that the GOP convention has shown us its best of the Romney/Republican ticket, it would turn my innards upside down to vote Republican. I would, additionally, feel as if I had betrayed all that I was raised to believe. So, by default, a Democrat vote it will be again.

So here I sit, coming right up on the November election 2012, reflecting on the road that has brought me here since election 2008. I don’t know what the journey from 2008 to 2012 has been for you, but for me it has been quite an education and an adventure.

For freedom and the streets
paved with gold

I set off for South America not long after that election with a total wait and see attitude about Obama though more than ready to do my part to work for the “American Dream” into which I was born and raised. The streets paved with gold that brought my immigrant grandparents here, not the least of which was to save our family from the Russian slaughter of our people, was a life-saving blessing; American citizenship an honor.

Eager to join with others to mobilize the grassroots platform upon which I thought Obama stood, wearied of George W. and company and yet still cautious I did look forward, slightly, to the possibility a new American era, after the elections in 2008. Might it not be that images of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and, of course, JFK might now come to our native shores? Especially if we could finally put the Civil War to rest with an African American in the White House.

I had spent my entire adult life in or around the periphery of Washington, D.C., coming here as I did, originally, for Camelot. I had sat nearby in the Maryland suburbs with my infant child, as JFKs funeral procession made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, my young husband filming the procession from atop a government building.

I had watched Washington burn that anguished night of Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination in April, 1968, praying forever after that America could recapture the collective unity I thought we seemed to have lost that day (an illusion I now realize), yet feeling as though we, possibly had lost more than we could ever hope to regain. But like much of contemporary America, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and then Watergate seemed to pound in the final nails of the coffin of our “American Dream.”

There seemed to be no end to the losses and discouragement. Now a flicker of hope that I was called to consider. I would not turn aside. Obviously idealism runs thick in my blood.

Besides, what had I to lose, now, by sticking close to what had become my home territory, hoping, just a little, that this soil would, at last, offer itself up as fertile for a healthy new growth potential?

But, I had, also, been around Washington too long to take a political platform very seriously. Setting aside assassinations as a deciding factor for potential outcomes, folks I met in South America spurred my considerations for a healthy U.S.A. future. After all, as I had seen in Ecuador, we must have something in the U.S.A. For one thing, we could be relied upon, consistently, to outfit our bathrooms with toilet paper. I extolled this virtue, many times over, in the close to two months I spent in Ecuador. Toilet paper in bathrooms, regularly; that says something for the U.S.A., doesn’t it?

By the time I returned home to the conveniences of American soil, having been edified by the Ecuadorians I had met; mostly a hearty well-educated group, to be sure, I was, once again, prepared to ask myself anew, “What can I do for my country?” This new president just might herald in a new American politics. After many decades off to the sidelines, wasn’t it time for me to finally join in with the game while I was still young enough to play?

Loss and discouragement with our politics did not need to last forever, I told myself. Now I would take a new course and offer myself up full force to join grassroots activities. Perhaps even find a niche for New Horizons while I was at it. No more counterculture reactivity for me. A new era might be upon us.

Ever curious about people and the evolutionary processes and dynamics of a society in motion, soon after my arrival home I, soon, set out to discover how “we the people” could, collectively, support this new president and his idealistic platform for the coming American Dream. After all, we never had had the chance before to fully carry forth dreams such as Kennedy’s (or even those of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society for that matter).

Thus the Possible Human, Possible Society Study was birthed. How might we achieve this possibility of a possible society in motion? I felt inclined to systematically explore the idea, watch as the possible society in motion unfolded. If we, or, at least most of us, remained alive for the next four year term might we not really begin to fulfill the potential for our “American Dream”?

More comments to come on my education and adventures through the Obama era.

How has it been for you, this adventure of the past four years? It most likely was not a nothing to you either. Tell us your stories too.