Keep the Radio On
I was already late in finishing up my work today. It was one of the busiest days I’ve had in eight years, with a total of six psychiatric patients on involuntary holds at three hospitals around the Portland area. The only bright spot was getting to see my wife Ruth (the nurse) at work on the psychiatric ward at Good Samaritan Hospital. Sometimes we get into this cycle where we have to make do with that. It’s tough, but there is that little benefit of a reasonable salary that goes with Ruth being there rather than home. So I just have to put up with it, I guess.
Anyway, it was already 5:00pm when I pulled into the parking lot of Emanuel Hospital to see my last two patients of the day. I was counting on just dashing in, doing a couple of quick interviews, and dashing out to head home. But just as I pulled into the parking lot and was ready to turn my car off, NPR started its coverage of President Obama’s press conference. I turned off the car, but left the radio on, intent on just listening to his opening statement and then heading on inside to the ward. An hour later, I was still sitting in the car.
I think I’d forgotten what it was like to listen to someone who actually sounded presidential. Someone who could think and speak at the same time. Someone who conveyed the calm confidence of the leader of the country and the free world instead of a swaggering bully intent on proving he’s the toughest kid on the school yard. Someone who respectfully called the members of the press by name and noted their affiliation, instead of demeaning them like his predecessor who tossed out condescending and childish nicknames that only served to make himself seem even smaller than he already was. Someone who could not only decide, but outline the various alternatives, weigh each against the others, explain the advantages and disadvantages of each potential option, and then spell the best one out to all to us in a way that makes sense.
I honestly don’t know how we made it through the last eight years. I also sometimes think the nightmare isn’t over, especially as I watch the Republicans continue to espouse their failed ideologies and posture before the cameras like bantam roosters, even after having the living daylights kicked out of them in the last election, I honestly believe they think they did something good for the country and that if they can just cackle loud enough, we’ll realize how wrong we all were to elect that silly black man who doesn’t even have a southern accent, for heaven’s sake. And accept their own explanation that the three weeks he’s been in office are actually what’s caused this mess instead of them running up the deficit, ruining our standing in the international community, selling off the wealth of average Americans to their corporate fat cat cohorts, and turning the world’s best military into what in a few years is bound to be the greatest PTSD factory ever seen.
It would serve them right if the next elections were next week. Perhaps if their rolls were slashed again by the voters they might finally get the picture that we’re just plain tired of all their empty talk and smoke and mirrors approach to economics, foreign policy, and our civil rights. Maybe if what’s been trickling down to the average American trickled on them for a while, they might realize from the smell alone that it isn’t the prosperity they promised us, but something much more foul. But I doubt it. I really doubt it.
I hope the rest of the country can see how strong this truly young man, younger than me by eight years, actually is. I look at him and see impatience. I see his disappointment in the smallness of people who he so badly wants to rise up and be great. I see someone willing to take the country where it needs to go and wondering where all the people are that should be right behind him. But I don’t see fear. And the way things look like right now, if there’s anything that he actually deserves to be, it’s afraid. The fact that he isn’t, or at least doesn’t look like he is, is pretty much the thing that gives me the greatest hope that everything is going to turn out ok after all.
So I sat and I listened until President Obama, my President, was through before I turned off the radio. And actually wished he were still talking when I did.
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