Robert Owens
Did You See "It"?
By
Sep 17, 2008 - 9:06:42 AM

If you missed “it,” you missed “it.”  Finally, the spectacle I have waited all my life to see.  As a historian and an admitted political junkie, I have had to make do with old grainy black-and-white movies.  I have had to endure labored translations and once or twice, subtitles, but now I have seen it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, and I must admit I am impressed.

The old May Day Parades in Moscow never quite reached the same level of drama.  The old men in their fedoras looked more like Citizen Kane than Caesar.  The casts of thousands who take part in the regularly-scheduled synchronized worship sessions in Pyongyang, although they are well-choreographed and they do their best marching back and forth, waving their big red flags with a leading man whose Mini-Me with a bad haircut and lifts, just don’t have the star power needed to really capture the imagination.  What about China?  Ever since they decided to become Wal-Mart with concentration camps, they don’t even try to give us a mass meeting we could sink our teeth into.

Watching Himself accept the nomination surrounded by tens of thousands of mesmerized true believers, I knew I was finally witnessing political theater that rivaled the mass meetings in Nuremburg, the torch-lit parades in Berlin, and the hypnotizing balcony speeches in Rome.  My chest swelled with pride as I thought, “Only in America.”  With the help of the best visual talent from Hollywood, the best writers this side of “The Simpsons,” and the best teleprompter reader ever, I wondered if we as a people have finally produced what other Americans have only dreamed of: the man on the white horse.  Have we finally arrived in the Promised Land?  As the seas part and our anointed brings enlightenment down from the mountain I wonder, is our Long March through the confusing wilderness of freedom and opportunity finally over?  Now will we bask in the luxury of cradle-to-grave security without all that dangerous personal responsibility and the siren song of self-reliance there to open the door for possible failure? 

Is this just a preview?  Can’t you just imagine the joy and adulation that will greet the inauguration?  I can just see it now.  Everyone will be there: Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Mayor Daley, all the luminaries.  The future Energy/Climate Czar Al Gore, the future Supreme Court Justice Hillary Rodham, and of course, that grand old man of American politics and paragon of ethics, William Jefferson “I was never convicted” Clinton.  Why did we wait so long?  Finally, an America where everyone will be on a level playing field, finally an America where we all get free health care, free college, expanded everything, and tax cuts too. 

Now that the media has chosen the best candidate and racism is dead, after we pay our reparations and the global poverty tax, we can move on to the important business of strengthening the UN, the ACLU, and all the other organizations that make American life so much more fair and so much less American.

Yes, my chest swelled with pride as I witnessed the beginning of the end for that old hateful society George Washington and the rest of his gang of founders foisted on us as I recalled the words of a late prophet.  They may not have been written on the tenement walls, but someday as we look back, knowing these were the good old days, I know these words will ring in my ears: “In tattered tuxedos they face the new heroes and crawl about in confusion.  All the hands raised, they stood there amazed at the shattering of their own illusion.”  I know my heart will always skip a beat recalling the united throats of 85,000 devotees screaming the traditional rallying cry of Caesar Chavez, “Si, se puede!” or if you push 1 to hear it in English, “Yes, we can!” and remember that after watching America’s first Nuremberg moment, I first realized that contrary to the title of my one of my favorite books, It Can’t Happen Here, the odds are it can.

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