The Dream Deferred

Well, maybe I've been wrong about Boomers after all.

This is a thoughtful and insightful e-mail from a reader of the Daily Dish about the traumatic effects of the three assassinations of the 60s had on his generation and how he sees Obama as fitting in the mold of those three lions cut down in their prime (JFK, MLK, and RFK for you kidlings out there). 

My nascent political worldview was formed by those experiences: there was a progressive force in our country, and a reactionary one. The forces of reaction would stop at nothing, including murder, to stop progressive change. Of course I realized there was no connection between the three assassinations--except there was. There was something in the air, or rather under the surface, some dark unconscious collective force--the American shadow. Read the history of that time as prose, and this take on causality seems ridiculous, if not paranoid: given the three completely unconnected assassins--two of whom apparently acted alone--you have nothing more here than random coincidence. Read it as poetry, though, with the heart, and you understand there is no coincidence. Both views, of course, are true.

What happened then--the decapitation of the progressive liberal force in this country, just as it's next generation was reaching adulthood--has everything to do with Obama today. He's the dream deferred, the inheritor of myth. So the Grateful Dead will play for him on Monday, and I will vote for him on Tuesday, not to bypass something we Boomers started--because believe me, we did not start the great divide--but to finish the battle we began then and fulfill what was always, always our dream--the same dream that we are dreaming today, and that Barack and Michelle describe so eloquently every time they speak: justice, unity, freedom--not as abstract principles, but as real, on-the-ground, shared American realities. It's been a long time coming.…

The genius of Obama--and it is a spiritual genius--is he quiets that old nightmare. He lifts us beyond. He wakes us up, brings us together--the true opposite to Bush and Rove, who drove us deeper into drugged sleep and division, day by day. That was your point in "Goodbye to All That", and it was well said. But don't blame the Boomers--left or right--for a war that's been going on forever. And don't underestimate the sleeping giant we Boomers--especially we liberal Boomers--represent. We have not forgotten our dreams.