Two Hopes

On my way to work today, I was thinking about the Huffington Post article I recently read on the historic significance of Hillary's run for the White House. This has been an immensely important election for all Americans. That goes without saying. But for women and African Americans there is obviously an additional factor that makes this election even more personal. And when something is personal, the stakes are so high, and there is so much on the line, it has the potential to get ugly. I am not an election historian, but from everything that I have been able to piece together, both Barack and Hillary have remained comparatively civil from a historical standpoint.

Yet, there have been moments that have bordered on vicious. In thinking about all of this I remembered a quote from a review of the book The House of Sand and Fog which I read a couple of years ago. The review was from the Los Angeles Times and it stated, "The most rending kind of war is not between two hatreds, but between two hopes." I think this is an important thing to keep in mind when we think about who our 'adversaries' are.

It is easy for Barack supporters to box Hillary into a caricature of an overbearing, power obsessed, do-anything-to-win tyrant. But it is just as easy for Hillary supporters to box Barack into a caricature of an elitist, arrogant, self-aggrandizing egoist. But I think it’s pretty damn hard to run for president without being a bit power-obsessed (the appropriate euphemism is ambitious) or a little arrogant (the appropriate euphemism is confident).

Most importantly, I think we must keep in mind that the reason this has been so ferociously fought is that although Hillary and Barack both represent the hopes of many of the same people, they also represent the hopes of many different people. And when these hopes from different people exist, as they likely always will, our unified future depends on our ability to conflate our common hopes and put that which is personal aside.