Rebecca Solnit on a Great Day

By Ben Trott

Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark, has an article on TomDispatch.com about the beginning of the Obama era. She describes the ‘passionate joy’ experienced as the world changed last Tuesday, the limited expectations she nevertheless has for an Obama presidency, and the need to conserve the hope held for those (inevitable) times in which dark moments will return. Her hope comes, she argues,

‘not only out of specific stories I have lived through, or even dug up as a historian, but out of a deeper sense of the sheer unpredictability of history, the darkness out of which hope emerges. No one foresaw that five years after George W. Bush stood, seemingly infinitely triumphant, on the deck of an aircraft carrier, he would be slinking off history’s stage in ignominy and an antiwar candidate would be taking his place. Not antiwar enough, but far beyond what most hoped for a few years ago.’

TomDispatch.com is, in fact, in general a great source of writing on Obama, the presidential election and much more. The site is edited by Tom Engelhardt and articles are published, usually with an introduction by Engelhardt, three to four times a week. You can subscribe here.