Ooh, That's Some Good Hope

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when desire cometh it is a tree of life.

Proverbs 13:12


Hope has been everywhere these past few months.

On television, in print and all across the internet. Barack Obama's campaign for president has made the politics of hope and change more popular than Dave Chappelle's once ubiquitous catchphrase about the powers of cocaine.

Hope is one helluva drug.

The insane popularity of the big "H" has drawn the ire of cynical political analysts across the political spectrum. Obama supporters have been labeled crackpots, naive losers and loony members of a cult more ridiculous than Scientology. Mr. O-tastic has been called a dream peddler; critics claim he's propped up by an abundant cache of charisma and ill-equipped to handle the rigors of governing.

Yet people can't seem to resist taking that first hit of "H".

It starts off small, typically by an opening of your mind to the possibility that in an America still corrupted by racism a black man as president isn't an impossibility. Then your friends start calling you when O-tastic is speaking on television and you sneak a quick taste of his uplifting oratory just to tide you over through another drudgery-filled day at work.

Pretty soon you're mainlining the "H."

Will.I.Am's video is constantly playing on your laptop, Obama's website is your homepage and you're camping out in front of some random assembly hall because O-tastic is slated to pop in to deliver the good stuff. You only watch CNN the night of primaries because you know you're going to be sick if Obama doesn't give a victory speech. When he does finally grab the mike, you feel a quick rush and then smooth relaxation as he unleashes that old school Baptist preacher cadence.

You're hooked on the "H."

Your upper crust friends tell you that you've changed, that they have never seen you like this. You're scaring them with your insistence that they've never felt anything like Obama, that they've never been inspired until they get a hit of his inspiration.

Like so many "H" junkies across the country you bristle at the mere suggestion that this relationship with hope is a bad thing. You calmly tell those self-proclaimed do-gooders that you aren't caught up, that you can fall back into your cynical outsider’s view of the world anytime you get ready. This only something you do for fun, you don't really need it.

You're a liar.

Hope is becoming your life. It's slowly consuming everything you do. And Obama's daily delivery of your increasingly important fix is the highlight of your day. You know that hope is what is truly important, you know that following it with a change chaser is the only way to live. You feel it in your bones every time you take another hit that this is the way the world is supposed to be.

Obama just better not lose because withdrawal is a motherfucker.

(Cats jacking my idea, like this fool. However, he clearly did not see hope as a good thing.)