More and more these days I read comments from people who are crying. They have read accounts of others who have been to Obama rallies and heard a disabled vet thank him for running for President, or they have seen a picture of the shining faces of little kids sitting on their parent's shoulders during a rally, or they have read accounts of elderly black women who are just trying to believe that this campaign is happening in their lifetime. This great national nightmare of the last eight years has not driven out of us the memory of what we have hoped our country could be; they have just driven it deeper into our hearts where it has been waiting for someone to call it out of us. We cannot help but cry, men and women alike, to think that our dream might be coming true. In my case, I also am remembering the many, many tears we cried during the late Sixties and early Seventies, the last time our dream seemed possible
During those bruising, heartbreaking years, the war in Vietnam went on and on. We wrote letters to our congresspeople, we marched in the street, we took our kids in strollers to stand in front of the gates of military bases, we debated tactics played our roles in Presidential campaigns. And the war went on. It was a filthy, stupid war --maybe they all are--and our neighbors and friends kept getting sucked into it against their will. We cried the old, sad tears when they died or came home broken.
But we cried the good tears too, the ones we could not hold back when we heard the voices telling us that we could make peace happen if we just tried hard enough, if our singers could just write the songs and if our music could just lift us up high enough, and if we could maybe dance fast enough.
We cried when we saw Jane Fonda and Caesar Chavez standing side by side on a platform above us because we could see--right there in front of us--that the good people had a voice and a chance, a chance, of taking America back. Everyone we knew felt the same feelings. Our thinking was good, our clothes, our music-- we believed. And we cried.
Still the ugly, filthy war went on and on. And all the time we had almost no idea that we were not winning. Everyone we knew was on our side. And then we had national elections.I think of how I felt the night that Richard Nixon was elected as President. The despair went so deep that it was too deep even for tears. We had hoped and believed for so long. And we had not understood that another force was also at work in America, one that believed in the war, one that loved authority and force as much as we loved freedom, one that could not see how bottomlessly empty was Nixon's soul. And they won. And then we heard people chanting for "Four More Years" and we though we had gone insane.
I think about those years when I hear and see Americans today so filled with hope by the Obama candidacy. And I know at the deepest level why so many Democrats vote for Hillary because she seems fierce and dishonest enough to protect us from that pain cutting us down again. If you have no idea why so many of us would vote for Hillary, I ask you to consider how many long days and nights we felt the pain of knowing that being a good person and believing in justice had come to seem like a cruel joke played on us by our country.
But what I'm really thinking about today is all the people younger than I and how much hope they feel about the coming election. In part I want to put my hand on their shoulders and say "I know. I know. I felt it too. But remember that the forces who will be against you have so very much power. And so many millions of dollars. You could get hurt." But I can never really say that to younger people today because maybe this time they are right, maybe this time it will be different. So here I am, with this broken, broken heart, that can still fill with hope. And these eyes that can still cry.