Jack Ross writes from Brooklyn:
I spent election night at my regular club, a folk oriented place in Red Hook, owned by a couple who knew Barack and Michelle in Chicago (the lady of the couple worked for the organization at the center of the Bill Ayers controversy!). I have been blessed and privileged to have spent election night there after watching the nomination speech with the great Jewish veteran of the civil rights movement, Rachelle Horowitz.
A few old friends were there, including one I hadn't seen in months, Lily Shachtman, great-granddaughter of The Devil himself. Most moving was getting to know an older black gentleman from the neighborhood who grew up in Lynchburg, VA, who could remember a moment when he thought he was about to see his father shot for not giving due deference to a white man. The raw emotion in the room, which was visible in the crowds on TV, and the nature of the crowds themselves, was overwhelming.
I spoke to my best friend Devin, who gave me an extraordinary account of the scene at Brown - 1000 people on the main green, a huge drum circle, and nude dancing. Such savage lefty celebration of the last decade's vintage was at least equally telling as any of the abysmal third party returns that the day of what Ron Radosh called "the leftover left" is long gone.
After Obama's victory speech we had an old fashioned folkie hoedown with banjo and fiddle band, dancing, the works until 1 in the morning. It felt as though I was actually inside the dream of an old Stalinist folkie about what The Great Day would look like, and the horror that seeing it would fill any old school anti-Communists who are still around. It was creepy, and the image of the wicked Doris Kearns Goodwin on the big screen didn't help, but it was quite the hootenanny still.
I was taken home by an old school New York cabbie with whom I talked about the state of the country, he passionately said Bush would be the most reviled president in history but thought both Obama and McCain were the two most pathetic candidates he had ever seen. I told him I didn't blame him, and we talked about the extraordinary nature of the support for Obama as we passed by cheering throngs in Park Slope - PARK SLOPE!!!!! This kind of celebrating in the streets over an election victory seems unheard of to me in living memory in this country, probably nothing like it on American soil since Al Smith was first elected Governor of New York 90 years ago.
When I got home I had a long chat with my friend Richard in California until suddenly at 2 in the morning there was still street celebrating to be had in overwhelmingly black Flatbush - a marching band came up Ocean Avenue at 2am!!! I went out and joined the reverie for a bit before coming back inside.
Just thought you'd all enjoy my account of an extraordinary and historic evening, a great occasion. Yes We Can, and may God help us all.
I watched it alone, in my little space. I voted for Obama, but I am ready to kill someone–if not myself, then whom? I'm a European-American. I see nothing but tribes around their respective fires. I fear for the future of the world. I don't think there is any group, political or straight ethnic that knows the words of our founding fathers, and their base in the Enlightenment, is all we have in the long run–its
gonna be bad.
Gentiles get their view of Jews depending on where they sit in the formative years within the socio-economic web. Same with the Jews.
Always consider this and you will know much about history.