Smart is Back

I am astonished that hope has returned to the world and I'm ready to throw away my conspiracy theory t-shirts. While it is true that there were torture, renditions, black prisons, spying on folks with nothing worth listening to (like me), illegal wars, signing statements, stolen elections, the Patriot Act, ad nauseam, it is all nearly over.

As we watched the election results, my 15-year-old daughter asked me, with tears in her eyes, "Is it real, Dad?" I said, "I think so," and I wept with her. As did the world.

I was interviewed the morning after by a Hispanic TV channel from Miami and by the Ecuadorian version of Wolf Blitzer. They, too, wanted to know if I believed and I said I did. And I do. The guy from Miami asked if this was Camelot and I gushed, sure, yes, I think so, it must be, never in my life. . . . Two Kennedys are being considered for high level positions, I had read. Caroline for the United Nations. Imagine that, I said. A US president believing in the possibilities of the UN. And Robert Jr for Environment.

And all of Latin America awaits the change, countries and cultures being drawn with a finer brush. The end of stupidity and cruelty.

Not long ago, Richard Perle, spokesman for the neocons, said that elections no longer matter, that the creeps had changed the culture. But maybe, light your candles and say your prayers, just maybe they'll all go to jail. They've killed one million civilians in Iraq, the wreck of so many lives, all in the name of mundane evil and oil.

You were wrong, Perle, Bush, Cheney, stupid Old Mac, Miss Alaska. There is a time for all things. The humble and the brilliant have formed an alliance and the world has changed.

Witness the tears in Grant park. God is good.