From TPM Reader TB
I’m probably one of your standard readers: 40, white male, progressive, and very cynical. If pushed, I would agree to the statement “I love my country”, and I have traveled enough abroad to realize what privileges we have here and usually take for granted. Yet for most of my life, my love of America, has been similar to what I think Al Franken once stated, is the way we adults love family members that have deeply disappointed us — critical, sometimes too judgmental, and sad/angry at the waste of so much potential.
Yet this last year it has changed, and with the election and coming inauguration, I feel a true sense of pride, optimism, and real patriotism. Suddenly it does not feel squishy to sing along to “America the Beautiful”. And I am not ashamed to say that I had tears streaming down my face as I sang along with Bono doing Pride and City of Blinding Light. I felt all these emotions at once — gratefulness to all that have sacrificed before us to make this country a better place, as imperfect as it may be, and a real sense of (yes!) hope of what we actually do have the potential to become if we can all just come together and work for the common good of our country in the next (hopefully) 8 years.
That Obama has already started and instilled this feeling is a testament to his power and promise, and also to the incredible sense of danger mixed with opportunity that this time has given us.
