Letter to the Reader
Christopher Bernard
[Total Pages: 2]
Letter Page 1
 
 
Is our long political winter ending? To listen to the lyrical hopes of many Obama supporters (and I am one of them), you might think so: the dark night of the soul of the Bush years is fading at last, and come January, there can only be a new political sun.

We are hungry for heroes in a villainous time. American culture routinely deprives us of heroes; we are shown idiot savants who accidentally become famous, called celebrities; we are then invited to despise even as we envy them~which may explain our need to believe in Barack Obama.

But I have seen too many political cycles renew the vicious circle of hope and disappointment to rejoice too soon. I still hope, but moderately, since the powers that

lie, briefly cowed by the mess they have landed us in~ from the harshness of two stalemated wars to the delusions of a financial system divorced even more severely from reality than the White House, from the baroquely self-destructive impulses of a civilization founded on a suicide pact written in fossil fuel to the self-indulgences of a culture bent on proving that humanity is even more mindless and heartless than I, for one, believe it to be~these forces are more deeply entrenched than I think we give them credit for: they are wounded but not dead, bruised but not defeated.

I hope we at least can offer a small oasis in the cultural darkness of our glazed-eyed and cheerfully nihilistic America.