An American Dream

Finally, Hope! By grace, for an hour, for a day, the blasé, the prudent, and the skeptics are silenced.

After this November fourth, already historic, let us confess, in front of all, that we are taken by a sentiment of good will. For one hour or for one day let us speak with the enthusiasm that has broken over the planet. For several hours the Americans have had hope; for several hours, the entire world has felt better. Good will? A novel idea in America. It suffices to imagine for a moment the inverse: a stiff conservative senator thrown from a mystical ignorance to carry on for four years the brutal politics of George W. Bush. A moral nightmare, a political horror film. On the contrary, the symbolism is rife on this exceptional day. The ideal of Abraham Lincoln, the dream of Martin Luther King, the New frontier of John and Robert Kennedy: four hopes interrupted, four prophets of real sacrifice, who are revived, in the space of one moment, by the grace of this election. These are the symbols of an America which loves the future. The symbols of an America which one loves.

There will be time, tomorrow, to measure the difficulties of the task, to dissipate the illusions, to dissect the weaknesses of the new president elect. One can foresee that he has made more promises than he can satisfy. He has taken on the interests of a Country as much as he has the dreams of its electors. He must deal with the cold realities of geopolitics. He is not, perhaps, the progressive hero as fantasized by the French left. He is without a doubt more inclined to compromise and to maneuver than is though by the large part of his partisans. But his victory shows that the world can change and, for once, that the world can change for the better.

Obama can interrupt the course of this conservative revolution which has dominated the world since the election of Ronald Reagan. Finally, the values of solidarity, of attention to the weak, and of justice will be represented by the White House. Finally one will not be asked to believe that the interests of the billionaires coincide with that of the people. Finally, the Americans can hope for better social protection, control over Wall Street, money for health care, for education, and for the environment. And in one word, they can hope for a more humane society, which will show other nations that concrete justice is not always a Utopian objective.

All this because the winner of November fourth is a man of the new century. A man of mixed race, former social worker, grandson of an African, Barack Hussein Obama has chosen to be an American. His history show that identity is not a necessarily a work of nature which is locked into man at their birth but also the lucid adhesion to democratic principles. With Obama, it’s a bit of the south and its suffering which enters the capital of the north. With Obama, it’s a lot of our world mixed together for the highest function. Does all of this seem naive, virtual, hypothetic? Maybe. But for one hour, for one day, one must try to hope. Try to hope that, for the first time, in a long time, the New World can merit its name.