Is it safe to come out yet?

I don’t want to get run over by any parades.

I know I shouldn’t post just to point you to the words of others, but they do it so much better, and besides, I’m in a hurry. Funny to see the best critiques of Obama come from the left-minded.

Arthur Silber from before Inaugural Day:

I post this brief message only to let those few of you who have not lost your fucking minds know that you are not alone. Some of us, perhaps three or four hundred, still retain some connection to reality. But it frays and is under lethal attack. Whether the connection will survive the next day or two is an open question. Recourse to alcohol (and/or other substances of your choosing), sex and other diversions might be the wisest choice, until midweek at the earliest. Let’s play safely: make it until the weekend. Hell, through the weekend.

I’m on it, sort of. And here’s Dennis Perrin in “The HOPE Haze“:

There are days when I feel so out of it, so alienated, that I wonder if I’ve gone insane or suffer some deep personality disorder. After yesterday’s drool fest, where countless adults behaved like sugar-crazed children, I certainly hope that I’m nuts. Because if I’m not, if what I perceive is actually true, then we are so beyond fucked that the glimmer of fucked is a fuzzy speck on the horizon.

Now, I don’t want to feel this way; I have enough negative emotions as it is. But after watching the $150 million imperial saturnalia, augmented by the siren songs of fawners, spin doctors, and state mouthpieces, despair and anxiety rage inside my battered brain. Even worse, average people loved it. Simply fucking loved it. Everywhere I went online, it was the same maypole dance, the same sighing, the same crying. “Free at last!” was the collective chant, as though Bush and Cheney were run out of Washington by revolutionary forces. If only. “I thank President Bush for his service to our nation,” said Obama, praising the war criminal’s “generosity and cooperation” in helping him prepare to assume the same role.

More in Perrin’s “Mental Case File“:

A few liberal friends have pitied me in the past few days, wondering why I won’t surrender to the general national ecstasy. They know deep down that I want to, but ego, stubbornness, and brand identification are holding me back. I’m a contrarian for contrarian’s sake, or worse, an ultra-lefty who won’t settle for anything less than immediate revolution.

Do I really give off that vibe?

It’s true that I lean “left” on most issues, whatever or wherever “left” happens to be in 2009 America. But I don’t see myself as ultra-anything, and certainly not as a card-carrying contrarian. Revolution? Here, today, now? Even if that were possible, I doubt I would sign up. I’d probably look for some place to hide.

…All of this yammering aside, don’t I find the image of a black man in the Oval Office somewhat uplifting? Seeing Obama in the big chair is a bit startling to someone my age, as I remember racism when it was open and unapologetic. So I’ll confess to getting a slight charge from those first photos of Obama behind the desk. It’s what that desk represents that curbs any possible enthusiasm.

If it’s got to come down to identity politics, shouldn’t I be pissed that it’s a black man and not a white woman in the seat of power? Black men have been oppressed in this country; so have the black women, and all women’s oppression goes waaay back. But don’t get me started. I’ve long since dug myself into a hole.