Pippin (Billy Boyd): Tell me, Gandalf, is there any hope, for Frodo and Sam.
Gandalf (Ian McKellan): There never was much hope-just a fool’s hope.
Last Tuesday, I refused to tune in to any news. We live on the west coast, so there’s really no point until later in the evening anyhow. But my mother called at seven o’clock, and said that Obama had taken Pennsylvania and Ohio. "It’s looking good." she said. Even then, I refused to hope. I had been refusing to hope for months. That this long nightmare of the G. W. Bush Administration was ending, and would not continue under John McCain, was too good to be true. Not until nine o'clock was I finally able to let go and start dancing around the livingroom.
When I first heard the title of Obama’s memoire The Audacity of Hope, I thought, here’s another one of those titles that sounds good, until you pick at it, and then it doesn’t really mean anything. The other day, after the movie ended, I though about it again, and realized what a profound statement it is. What does make anyone think that anything will get better, especially after an eight-year crime wave?
Yet now, I too, am daring to hope. I hope that Americans have realized at last that we need grown ups in charge, not drinking buddies. I hope that the war against science and reason will come to an end, and we can begin a serious transition to alternative energy (everything thus far has been half-assed). I hope that Obama will once again ban torture, and restore the rule of law, which is what made this country so great in the first place. I hope conservatives will stop acting like anyone with a different opinion is an enemy who must be vanquished; we’re all Americans.
It's funny, because I've made this point in my own work, but before this election I never truly understood it. We're here, so we might as well try to make things better. Heck, I think we must be hardwired to try, and to hope, even in the face of calamity, or true evil, or perhaps worst of all, indifference. I am human, therefore I hope, and try. (I don't care what Yoda says; trying counts).
I also must be realistic. Obama is just a man, albeit a better one than many. I hope our faith in him isn’t misplaced, and that he can get something done, for the first time in a decade. People are eager for improvement, for better schools, for an end to a stupid, wasteful war, for an end to pointless bickering that’s more about the prestige of ones’ own clique than anything else. With all of that good will and energy behind, maybe Obama really can bring this country back to the light. And I hope that now I can get back to the business of writing, without worrying.
Maybe this time, it isn’t just a fool’s hope.
