I remember them well. The 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections. I remember the incredulous disbelief that GW was elected not once but twice! What is wrong with you people. Or is it me? I am living in a parallel universe where GW is actually a witty and articulate fellow. I was resigned to a life time of neocon nincompoopery. The world has changed and I'd better get used to it and stop getting angry.
I discovered Barrack Obama earlier this year in February or at least that is the earliest time I can remember taking any thing more than a passing interest in the man who was going to make history and change the world yet again. I was in my little brother's apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. Well he is six foot 3 and weighs about 16 stones so he is not so little really. I was in ATL, as it is affectional referred to in the US, to see my younger sibling and to get a flavour of Flava 3 Salsa Congress. About mid morn when I awoke from my much deserved slumber, after hours of pounding the dance floor to the hypnotic beats of the salsa dura, I automatically reached for my Mac and scanned Youtube for any interesting videos whilst I waited for my brother to wake up. It is during one of these sessions that I happened upon a speech of Mr Obama. I was mesmerised. I then spent any spare time I had in ATL on my Mac watching his speeches, interviews, etc. This I have done now for months and throughout the democratic primaries I was glued to the screen of my laptop scouring the web for any piece of information about the primaries I could lay my hands on. I was hooked I have to admit I went right off Hilary and I certainly changed my ideas about Bill Clinton whom I had supported from afar and thought he got a raw deal from the rabid right of American politics during his presidency.
The truth is,I have also witnessed the false starts of Jessie Jackson is then 80s.So I bought in wholeheartedly to the premise that an African American is unlikely to get the chance in the US to run for President let alone get elected President. I bought into the Southern Strategy malarkey, the Bradley Effect shenanigans and all other political theories which deftly articulated why this scenarios is unlikely to ever happen. Well, not in my life time anyway. So you can imagine my shock when Mr Obama actually defeated Mrs Rodham Clinton and was actually nominated as the Democratic nominee for President. Damn! I thought. Can ths really be.
I watched in earnest as the Presidentially campaign rolled out and I have to admit again I expected disaster. The well oiled Republican wrecking machine will soon swift-boat his sorry little skinny arse like they did a certain John Kerry back in 2004. I waited and waited and nothing of any substance materialised. Sure they was the Reverend Wright but to be honest I just did not see this as an issue that could fatally wound the slick Obama Express. Sarah Palin turned up and sure I thought, Shit! This is it! Then she open her proverbially gob and then we all realised that this was but a mere comic interlude the relieve the otherwise serious business of electing the most powerful person on earth to office. Incidentally I think Africa ought to be a country as well as a continent; The United Sates of Africa. Granted it would be a bureaucratic nightmare but the it more or less is. Why not have it centralised.
I stayed up all night to watch the US presidentially election. I did not even do this for Bill Clinton. Gore to be honest I thought was a bore. So did everyone one it they were honest until he made that film about the environment. John Kerry? Something told me h was just another Jimmy Carter waiting to happen but I'll hazard a guess that it was a case of anyone but Bush so he'll do.
I had CNN for company all night and watched every result as they develop and were eventually called. I consumed an unhealthy amount of tea interspersed with the odd rum and coke. Sure, I would have liked to have had it the other way round, but it was a school night and I was not going to rolling into work mid week suffering the ill effects of too much rum and tension.
And when the moment came and Mr Obama was declared the likely winner, I still held out for that phantom republican wrecking machine to deliver an unplayable yorker and rip through the carefully constructed alternative reality of Obama winning the US presidentially election.
I can not remember any other time in recent memory when I was happier and I was not on a dancefloor somewhere. Words can not describe my feeling so I am not even going to try.
But it is at moment like these that I am overcome with that surreal feeling that things outside my field of vision don't actually exist. And things just get rolled out minutes before they come into view to fool me into thinking that I exist. But I am onto them, because every now and then they slip up and have illogical constructs like a gimp being the president of the most powerful country in the world for the lat eight years or americans voting for a mixed race fellow whose surname has more than 2 syllable and his middle name is Hussein to be President. Yeah right. I am on to you guys.