(As long promised, so now delivered: The first of a three-parter I did for Quorum Report in late January.)
The night Barack Obama was elected, my wife and I decided to go to his inauguration. I had a romantic notion that taking a road trip across the heartland from Texas to Washington, D.C. would be the best way to go. The idea of this trip became fixed in my mind as a necessary pilgrimage to my nation’s capital. I had never seen it.
As I write this, America exists in a fluid present at the crossroads of history and on the precipice of total disaster. Economically, domestically, and internationally we have plates brimming with misery. As a counterbalance the American people elected the first African-American president. Everyone that has not already decided to hate Barack Obama has placed all of the world’s troubles at his feet for him to bear on strength of what thus far is little more than potential.
I voted for Barack Obama – it would be dishonest for me to conceal that – but I don’t know that he can save my country, let alone the world.
I love my country but I also readily admit to pessimism concerning its condition. I wonder if my countrymen feel the same way. That is the most accurate explanation I can produce, and I hope it sufficiently illustrates the origin of my need to drive across the United States in a bitter winter, and to ask people how they feel about America, and to be one of millions on the National Mall on an Inauguration Day during what will be, for good or ill, a turning point in history.
***
“The way I see it, the inefficient people? They’re gonna all be eliminated.”
Trevor turned from me to hug a girl on her way out of the bar and then turned back to me and smiled too widely. “…and that’s Darwinian, and it’s not cool, and it’s not fun. But it will happen.”
In Nashville I went to a bar called The Villager. I needed a drink and wanted to take an anecdotal poll from the bartender about the aggregate mood of his clientele. I did not expect to meet Trevor, but he was sitting next to the only empty seat at the bar. He asked me my name as I sat down and ordered a beer.
Trevor was 24 years old. When I mentioned that I was on my way to the inauguration, his eyes lit up.
“I support him so much,” said Trevor. “My father and I both work in the hospitality industry, and he’s convinced that everything is falling apart and that we can’t recover.”
“What do you think?”
“I take the Millennial look at it – we are very smart and we have computers, so we can take care of business, right?”
His generational self-awareness was an odd dichotomy: a young man, well-read and cognizant of current events, aware of what is expected of people his age and content to deliver no more than that with notes of a detached, disaffected regret.
Trevor told me about the work he does in finance and how, ever since he started eight months ago, all he’s done is cut worker hours and salaries. He tells me he dislikes this because these workers have bills and mortgages to pay.
Trevor explained that he came from advantage, that his parents provided him with an education and a job. He criticized George Bush, talked with steely indifference about the price of doing business, and got misty-eyed as he told me about the Obama mural he’d spray painted on his apartment wall.
Towards the end of the night, some truth came out. “Despite all my parents did for me, I’ve run up some debt,” he said. “I understood the system so I went ahead and did it and I’ll probably never pay it off.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You keep telling me that you have a great job and you make plenty of money.”
“Oh, I do,” he said. “I have a great job, and for the first six months or so, I paid all my bills and I was miserable. Now I don’t pay them, and my iPhone blows up all day with 800 numbers, creditors trying to collect. I could pay them all, but I don’t.”
A beat, and then: “Because I hate them.”
This was not ‘hate’ the way a child might say he hates something during a tantrum. Trevor’s eyes were flat and flinty when he stopped staring off into space and looked at me again, before he repeated it:
“I hate them. I understand how it works and I understand what they do, and I hate them.”
This was the truth. Maybe Trevor went on like this with everyone that would listen after he’d had a few drinks, or maybe I was the first to hear it. Either way, it was real.
On my way out the door after last call, Steve the bartender asked if I’d gotten a good answer to my question. I told him I had, but that I was still interested in his take.
“Hopeful but apprehensive. I think that’s the most we can do.”
Once I got back to the hotel, I shook out of my smoky clothes and climbed into bed. I lay awake for a long time and thought about Trevor. It was not that I felt sorry for him – and I got the impression that he would tell me not to – but I felt sad all the same.
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