V-Day (updated)
Today’s the day.
Did The West Wing predict the outcome of the US presidential election back in 2006? Will life imitate television imitating life?
Tobias Wolff, Edmund White, Walter Mosley and other writers on The state of America after Bush.
The winner of the Halloween Scare-Off will be announced this afternoon. Thanks for sending in your entries; you have very interesting views about the Filipino character.
*****
1300h. I will not go by the projections. We sat through the 2000 Bore v. Gush election, we cheered at the projections, and we got screwed. I want to see a confirmed final result. I want to see a lead so big it cannot be stolen. I want to hear McCain concede.
1330h. MASSIVE SIGH OF RELIEF. What a speech. And no cheesy soundtrack!
A geek has been voted into the White House. The 21st century has truly begun.
*****
The winner of the Halloween Scare-Off: Blue State or Red State? is. . .
Kaboboyan.
Si Obama ang magwawagi. Wala tayong equivalent na Joe the Plumber na pwedeng i-exploit ni McCain. Wala pa kong nakikitang Pinoy na tubero na kasing pogi at simpatiko.
Short, funny, and without the tone of condescension that soured many intelligent entries. Kaboboyan, your book is on its way to you.
*****
The thing is to Live As If. Live As If you were truly free. Live As If you were surrounded by intelligent, capable people. Live As If your decisions mattered in the general scheme of things. Live As If art, literature, music, the cinema really mattered. Live As If other people were just like you. I don’t mean you should tiptoe through the tulips and delude yourself that everything is wonderful. I mean you must resist. I mean you must not let idiots dictate how you live your life. Stupidity is a given; do not hold yourself back because you think you’re surrounded by it. Do not give in to the tyranny of surveys, trends, and conventional wisdom. You are the product of millions of years of evolution. Organisms mutated, survived, adapted over eons, against huge odds, so that you can be what you are now. Honor your species.
That’s my post-election speech. Thank you.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 5th, 2008 at 12:30
Well, a historic day for the USA. McCain conceded to Obama.
Cue in “We Shall Overcome.”
November 5th, 2008 at 13:22
OBAMA WON!!! i’m so happy, i’m in tears!!! there’s hope in the world :D
November 5th, 2008 at 13:30
Yes, we can!
November 5th, 2008 at 14:13
This only reaffirms the role – and how so oftenly ignored – of wordsmiths in the gamut of human civilization. That alongside your spacey shamans and burly blacksmiths there is your skittish scribe. Of course, one does not have to be reminded that writers were prophets in Biblical times.
November 5th, 2008 at 14:34
The New York Times has called the win, or at least implied, “overstated” – which I kind of agreed. Come to think about it, “change” is like the battle cry of so many campaigns you wonder if it still holds anything significant. Then again I’m just v. pessimistic.
But like everyone, I join in on the (worldwide, except Georgia) sigh of relief.
November 5th, 2008 at 15:27
change would do us good.
November 5th, 2008 at 15:37
Yeah, of course, and then Live As If… Philippines were the United States of America where you can vote for your candidate today and have the result the following day…
November 5th, 2008 at 16:03
We’re finally going to turn things around. It’s the responsibility of Americans to realize that this is just the beginning. We’re now going to have to roll up our sleeves and work on things like Guantanamo Bay, Iraqi occupation, holding multinational corporations responsible for what’s happening at the stock market, the election of better quality US supreme court justices, reversing The Bush Doctrine, more sensible measures on US homeland security, and many other important issues.
Yes, we did…but it’s only the beginning.
BTW, I’ve already downed 2 glasses of rhum and Coke and am now down to one Belgian brew for “washing” before going to bed.
I also hope the ballot initiative advocating for more funds to the agency I work for gets approved. It’s looking good so far.
November 5th, 2008 at 16:06
Yes they did! Big sigh of relief there. Sabi nga nila, “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly…”
Was watching the Fox tallies, because it was there when they got it wrong 8 years ago. And was surprised to see that Obama was leading! I saw photos of the masses of Americans, happy and dancing in the streets – I guess they felt like us during EDSA I or II.
If the Americans can do it, I’m sure we can do it here to. I just hope there’s someone still untainted by Pinoy politics whom we can support.
November 5th, 2008 at 17:35
Let us just hope Obama lives up to the hope (not the hype) that buoyed his electoral campaign, from the time he took on the Hillary Clinton juggernaut to roundly beating McCain.
For all the media coverage, this win appears like the ultimate anticlimax – like watching the Celtics wax the Lakers in a ho-hum six-game series. The crowd may all cheer, but only the true faithful understand how far the winner had to travel just to get to the battleground.
Here in the Middle East, the Arabs (at least the ones I meet) are roundly congratulating everyone on the Obama win. Nationalities from other countries are pretty much saying the same thing — the end of the Republican reign means a fresh start. Life, at least for one day, has suddenly become rosier, and the prospect of a better world isn’t all that hopeless.
If in this way Barack Obama has already affected the world, just by being there …. well, your post-election speech sums it up. There is hope for us human beings after all.
November 6th, 2008 at 09:42
i winced when i read this:
It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few — Israel, Georgia, the Philippines — favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05global.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
ganun?