We all know there are those who are incapable of admitting defeat. There is a thin line between resolve and delusion, but some innate perception in us allows us to identify this invisible marker. For example, George W. Bush is not resolved when it comes to Iraq; he is delusional. This is the most human of attributes, this insistence on hoping against hope, of dreaming against reality. Generals, lovers, and artists know it well; it is an inescapable and often redemptive part of the human condition.
But what about its mirror image? What about those who refuse to accept victory? What about those who are so invested in a narrative of victimization that they are literally incapable of acknowledging that they have slayed their dragons, that they have cowed their conquerors? This tendency is also a part of the human condition, and it is one we can observe in all walks of life. It is currently manifesting itself among the punditocracy of the left in regards to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
First, we have feminists such as Gloria Steinem, who insist that gender is still the "biggest obstacle in our society", and that an inherently misogynistic culture such as ours will never accept a female president. This case would be far easier to make if Hillary Clinton was not winning tens of millions of votes from American men while Steinem was ranting about their misogyny.
Steinem, and others like her, seem invested in looking at the world as it was, not as it is. Because the world as it is is clearly ready for the idea of a woman president. And if Hillary Clinton fails, it will not be because she is a she. It will be because she is unlikeable, amoral, a warmonger, married to a walking blackmail magnet, and ascendant due to marriage more than merit. Those are legitimate reasons to vote against someone.
This is a bit like the false and lazily reflexive proposition that criticizing any action taken by Israel is indicative of anti-Semitism. If I say Israel should not have destroyed an entire country in retaliation for two kidnappings, that does not mean that I hate Jews. It means that I hate seeing countries destroyed.
We don't live in the world Steinem grew up in, and we should not be held hostage by her inability to recognize how much things have changed in exactly the direction she has advocated for so long. Many people of her generation are simply incapable of accepting how much things have changed for the better.
They cling to such house-of-card-canards as "women make 70 cents to the dollar for the same work as men". Really? If that were true, why would ANY unskilled workplace hire ANY man? If this insultingly transparent slander had any truth to it at all, there would be nary a Y chromosome in a single American Wal-Mart, Dunkin' Donuts, or McDonalds. Women make less than men because they disproportionately take lower-paying jobs such as teaching or child care and because they take time out from their careers to raise children.
To Gloria Steinem and others like her, I say "you have advocated for a cause that had great moral force and has achieved great moral ends. You should be commended for your efforts and accomplishments. But to deny that those accomplishments have been made only betrays your alienation from contemporary society."
If the nation was still tethered to stodgy WASPish men, what happened to Joe Biden and Chris Dodd? Sober, white-haired, vastly experienced? They lost. To a woman and a black guy. Wake up, Gloria, you won!
The same dynamic is at play with Obama. We are told over and over again by members of the generation that came of age in the 60's that a black man can not win the presidency. Again, this insistence, this unsettling investment in America's image as a racist nation, betrays a divorce from reality.
The United States, over the last 50 years, has undertaken the most comprehensive moral leap of any society in the history of civilization in such a short period. In less than one lifetime, we have gone from a society where good people genuinely believed that segregation was the natural and just order of things to a society where, if a Senator says "macaca", he is ruined. Finished. Bill Clinton may have gotten away with molesting the help, but what if he had been caught on tape saying "nigger"?
When Barack Obama was born, American policemen were beating and hosing black people for the sin of trying to vote. Then they took off their uniforms, waited for nightfall, and killed a few of those black people for good measure and without consequence. Now Barack Obama, still a young man, is on the cusp of the presidency. It is literally unbelievable. But it happened.
And that is why this election is about the young, with "young" in this instance covering anyone under 40 years of age, say. The tens of millions of Americans who grew up in a time where racism and sexism were seen as vulgarities and injustices, not as the natural order of things, the fodder for jokes at dinner parties.
Part of the refusal of the 60's generation to acknowledge what is happening is the age-old defense mechanism of refusing to believe as a way of avoiding disappointment. In this context, if McCain wins, the wizened old folks will say, "See! We told you so!" But they are wrong not to believe.
We must say to those who do not believe in what they have wrought, "thank you." Thank you for making this a country where a woman or a black man can be president. Thank you. And even if you will not let yourself believe, we do. To see Hillary and Barack today must seem utterly surreal to those, like my father, who, with the very same eyes, saw black men beaten in public like dogs for daring to assert their humanity.
I do not blame this cohort for their cynicism and wariness; Lord knows they have ample justification for such jaded hearts. I am jaded as well, and I have no illusions about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or the ability of either one of them to undo what has been done, which is rather limited. But one of them could win. Because we believe.
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