Hopelessness We Can Believe In
In a coffee shop in western Pennsylvania the morning after Barack Obama’s muted acceptance speech in the arena, I overheard a conversation that made me wonder ‘why bother.’ “Forget about it. It’s all over,” said one excited man, the ringleader of five donut-dunking middle aged white men. He went on to advise his compatriots, “Anything you own in your own name, get it out of your name before they take it away.” The others mumbled agreement, and added their own advice about changing obscuring Social Security numbers and hiding guns. You’d think the Bolsheviks were amassing outside of Pittsburgh from the way they talked. The conversation grew more bizarro as the topic turned to military adventurism and terrorism. “Well, we won’t see any more terror attacks, because the terrorists love him,” said a man, who presumably will look back nostalgically on the days of airplanes-as-missiles after Obama makes peace with […]