Marcus Alden Meredith
September 1, 2024

A Sign of the Times

Hope and Recovery After the Pandemic

Back at The Jacquelyn on a Friday evening and my mind is still awash with words from a quite possibly historic speech… a speech which has my feeling in a way I haven’t felt since I first heard Barrack Obama’s speech at the DNC in 2004 - yes, twenty years ago and it still echos in my mind. But last night, I began to remember a feeling I haven’t felt since 2016… hope. Obama always gave me hope; he was my President. Obama’s campaign was the only time in my life I ever gave money to a political campaign. It was a special time and you could feel it in the air… Kamal Harris has brought that feeling back… and if feels good!

Now some judicious tempering of such elation I felt last night I think is wise considering the state of the electorate… but it’s so nice to have such a feeling of hope for the future again…Kamala Harris could be the new, the female, Barrack Obama. Let’s put events in context because the last month has been a heady time indeed. One month ago, President Biden seemed as though he was destined to come to this year’s DNC and preside over a wake, not a triumphal return and celebration. His debate performance was miserable by almost any standard of evaluation and it seemed that Donal Trump would simply walk back into the White House. The mood was dark and almost resigned to defeat. But history is not something any sane individual should even attempt to predict for it will surprise you just out of spite at the attempted prognostication. With the poor debate performance and the pressure building, Joe Biden pulls a play out of the George Washington playbook… He pulls out of the election campaign. But the masterstroke of his political abdication is that he then announces his endorsement of Kamala Harris, making her his successor. the news reached me as I was out and about in downtown when an acquaintance said,” Well, Biden says he’s pulling other of the Presidential race.” I had other letters my brain process what this implied to the politics of the times… what would happen in only a fortnight I could never have predicted and my heart is all the more delighted for it.

Like the proverbial Cavalry coming to the rescue in a some Deus Ex Machina fever dream,  Kamala Harris not only secured the delegates needed for the nomination, but lit an emotional fire in the Democratic Party and the public at large I have not seen… not since Barrack Obama declared his intent to run for the presidency in 2007. I remember those hopeful days when a brilliant mind of my own generation brought to America  what seemed like a New Age. Now, time and tide brought many opposing forces to bear on Obama and he suffered from bigotry and racism that saw a black president as a threat to their backwards, regressive mindsets and they simply could not deal with the notion of such nobility in the loftiest places of power. They were bound and determined to push us back to the 1950’s (or for some the 1850’s!). the pace of change and the response in some circles shot my mind back to Alvin Toffler’s  Future Shock text sending warnings about the downside of too rapid a pace of change in the future. But the forces that rose up were even more malevolent: anti-democratic, fascistic, misogynistic, racist and bent on forced imposition of Christian, White, Nationalistic rule on the United States… all in the name of God instituted by the anti-Christ in the persona of Donald Trump.

To say that the presidency under Trump was a time of Sith-like, imperial darkness is to only touch the surface. The fact that it coincided with great personal changes and involved the death of over 1 million Americans  due to the  abject ineptitude of Trump’s administration is more on the mark. It of course culminated in a “dumpster fire” of a year… 2020, which had a pandemic of COVID, wild fires in California causing a rain of ash on Northern California, and protests against racially motivated police violence on which turned downtown(s) into many a boarded up collection of ghost towns and left me feeling a bit apocalyptic. Finally, with Trump defeated at the poles, being at home watching the U.S. Capitol  building being over-run by a seditionist mob on January 6th just left my heart in a basement level mode I hope to never experience again. 

Fast forward 4 years with a Biden/Harris administration in charge and the Trump/COVID years of trauma have started to fade amidst the lessening of our collective PTSD as it shows signs of abatement. The signs of life are more travel, consumer spending going up, the stock market on an upward glide path, and so on. It’s still taking me time and a great deal of reflection to finally come to terms my life having changed so drastically… and for the better. New place, newer car, more physically fit than before and with a new profession while living well from a great retirement. But, none of this is guaranteed to continue and I fervently believe… no, I know, that the continued prosperity of the country is in a Harris victory in November and her presidency. When it comes to economics, Donald Trump is an imbecile (just look at the business track record of bankrupt and failed enterprises). More to the point, Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath  with delusions of grandeur lacking any moral compass and no one in his category of human should ever hold the kind of awesome power that is the Presidency of the United States of America. His is a message and a direction that leads to darkness and chaos…

Now, where Barrack Obama’s message was “Hope,” Kamala Harris’ is one of “Freedom” and “Moving Forward.”  And yet there’s that “Hope” note ringing out like a fine bell on a crystal clear morning. And, like a fat kid in a candy store, I want more of this, but she has to be elected! And I might, might, end up doing something I haven’t done but once… give money to a political campaign (the only other time as a reminder was to Barrack Obama). The dark days of Donald Trump and his MAGA madness just have to be washed away… forever! This sense of a new day, a new age, needs to be given the chance to grow and thrive. The light needs to defeat the darkness, for the sake of The Republic… and humanity.