“We live in troubled times. Hate and barbarity are always with us. But today they are being granted permission to act. Like the wink and a nod one gives to dissolute youth to help them along to do evil. It’s part of what I’ve called the ‘great disinhibition.’ All of this can only be fought — mercilessly. It must also be understood, yes. But only in a pragmatic and instrumental fashion to fight it more effectively, more totally. I think of the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish partisans rising out of their displaced persons camps who took vengeance on Nazis in the months and years after the War. No one of age is an infant and none deserve coddling. Of course the tide of barbarism is not only upon us. It has taken critical high ground. It is coming for Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, every group that is marginalized. We must fight it everywhere and not simply with words and ideas. It’s a fight, not a metaphor. Treat it that way.”

— Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, writing about the massive vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis this week

A couple weeks back, I did something I’ve never done before: I sent an email to the President of the United States.

I didn’t expect a response. Honestly, I didn’t even expect that he would see it with his own eyes, as opposed to some anonymous staffer. Nevertheless, as I contemplated the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency, I experienced a sense of personal connection and impending loss that was unlike anything I’ve ever felt for an an outgoing president. I felt compelled to reach out and say a few things to the man.

History and hindsight will be the ultimate judges of whether Obama was a good president, and what lasting impact his presidency may have. Personally, I think the future is probably going to look upon him quite favorably. (If anyone reading this happens to disagree, well, in the immortal words of The Dude, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.) I won’t pretend I wasn’t occasionally frustrated or disappointed by him. He flat-out failed to deliver on one of his campaign promises that meant a lot to me: Our extra-national gulag at Guantanamo Bay remains in operation, its handful of remaining inmates trapped in a legal Phantom Zone and the very existence of the thing a blot on America’s moral character. But given the resistance he faced in Congress to quite literally everything he proposed, I really can’t lay the blame for this one at his feet. Also, I wish he’d been more effective at selling his administration’s achievements and countering the other side’s non-stop avalanche of disinformation that’s led to some people actually thinking, among other things, that “Obamacare” and the ACA are two different things. But again, that’s not all on him. The Democrats in general have failed on this point. Finally, I wish he hadn’t been so doggedly determined to keep reaching across the aisle when the Republicans made it very clear from the very beginning that they were not, under any circumstances, going to work with him. There were times when he looked like Charlie Brown chasing after that damned football, with all of us knowing that Republican Lucy was just going to jerk it away and send him flying through the air again. It was embarrassing, frankly… and watching good progressive ideas get whittled away compromise by compromise (and still failing to pass) was pretty damn infuriating. But it was his belief in the inherent goodness of people, and in their willingness to listen to a rational appeal — his optimism that he could bridge the partisan divides that had opened up during the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations — that drew me to him in the first place. As satisfying as it might have been to hear him tell Mitch McConnell to go screw himself, that’s not the man I originally voted for.

In the end, Obama did not change the country as much as many of us hoped he would. Partisan tribalism is worse than ever, everybody is pissed off about everything, and “post-racial America” turned out to be a cruel fantasy. Indeed, his mere existence in the Oval Office seemed to draw out the very worst elements of this country from whatever dank hole in which they’d been hibernating. There’s no question in my mind that the incoming administration is the product, at least in part, of a backlash against whatever social progress the Obama administration did manage to foster. And all of that is immensely disappointing. I really hoped eight years ago that we were more evolved than that as a nation, and I can’t help feeling like we let him down, not the other way round, because we just weren’t ready for what he represented. But no matter what happens in the next four years, the Obama administration will always be a turning point in this country’s history. He was the first non-white president, and nothing is ever going to change that; I’m still proud of him for that achievement, and proud of this nation for taking a step forward by electing him. I hope I live long enough to see another such step forward, whether it’s another person of color or a woman, or perhaps even both.

I’m proud of him for much more than being an interesting statistic, though. Of the four presidents I’ve seen in my adult life — indeed all the presidents of my lifetime — Barack Obama is the one I most admire as a human being. His intellect, his sense of humor, his down-to-earth decency (so wonderfully evidenced by the photo above)… the fact that his administration remained scandal-free for eight years, that I didn’t have to make any excuses for him as I so often have for the last Democratic president… his dedication to his wife and children, the very embodiment of family values… and the dignity and unflappably cool head he so consistently showed in the face of unprecedented disrespect and obstruction from his political opponents… by all those measures, I would say Obama has been an extraordinary president. And I’m going to miss him.

Thanks, Obama. Sincerely.

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President Obama’s Farewell Address tonight had a number of memorable passages as he tried to put an epilogue on the past eight years, but to me there were none more salient or moving than his words about race, reflexive partisanship, and the tendency to demonize “the other”:

…if our democracy is to work the way it should in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction, Atticus Finch, who said “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

 

For blacks and other minority groups, that means tying our own very real struggles for justice to the challenges that a lot of people in this country face. Not only the refugee or the immigrant or the rural poor or the transgender American, but also the middle-aged white guy who from the outside may seem like he’s got all the advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic, and cultural, and technological change.

 

We have to pay attention and listen.

 

For white Americans, it means acknowledging that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t suddenly vanish in the ’60s; that when minority groups voice discontent, they’re not just engaging in reverse racism or practicing political correctness; when they wage peaceful protest, they’re not demanding special treatment, but the equal treatment that our founders promised.

 

For native-born Americans, it means reminding ourselves that the stereotypes about immigrants today were said, almost word for word, about the Irish, and Italians, and Poles, who it was said were going to destroy the fundamental character of America. And as it turned out, America wasn’t weakened by the presence of these newcomers; these newcomers embraced this nation’s creed, and this nation was strengthened.

 

So regardless of the station we occupy; we all have to try harder; we all have to start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens loves this country just as much as we do; that they value hard work and family just like we do; that their children are just as curious and hopeful and worthy of love as our own.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

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Voting results are starting to trickle in. So far, no surprises whatsoever.

I think this is going to be me for the forseeable future: