Titanic - hope or disaster?

Now this may be a little cheezy, but bear with me...it is just some rambling thoughts I have been working through today...

Since the moment I sat down on the plane, through the hours I spent at Heathrow waiting for my connecting flight, to the week or so I have been here in Belgrade, everyone with whome I have spoken has said some version of the same thing. “Congratulations! We are very happy about your new president. We like him very much. He is much better than Bush.” It seems that many people in the world believe in “Hope & Change,” and I agree with them.

From the time Barak Obama gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention 4 years ago, I believed in him. Here was a man who spoke so differently than any politician I had heard since I have been old enough to pay attention.

I was not certain he would be elected as the Democratic candidate this time around. He is young and Hilary Clinton, John Edwards and even McCain seemed to have a better chance at obtaining the presidency this time around, but still I hoped that Obama would one day be our president.

When Obama won the election in November I was filled with hope and excitement in a way that I had not thought possible. I study global conflict for a living and do not have a lot of hope for the condition of the world in general. But now, for the first time in a long time, I do.

Today, while waiting at the US embassy to register my Serbian residence, I spoke to a man named Vlado. Like so many others I have spoken with, Vlado remarked how thrilled he is that Obama is our new president. He said to me that he really hopes that one day Obama will visit Serbia. Vlado said he thought that the last US president to come to Serbia was Johnson, and at that point Serbia was part of Yugoslavia. He remembered that Clinton had come to Sarajevo, and that Bush had been to Croatia, Slovenia, and even Albania (though he also remembered – to my amusement - that while Bush was in the region, he continually confused Slovenia and Slovakia!), but even though NATO bombs fell on Serbia in 1999, and the US and UN had a hand in the fate of Kosovo, none of our leaders had been to Serbia in quite a long time.

I told Vlado that I agreed with him – that I too had a lot of hope for Obama, but that Obama has a large hill to climb. So many hopes – the world’s and the nation’s – are pinned on Obama. But he is only one man, and fixing so many problems in the world and in the US is a lot to expect from one man. I then told Vlado about a sort of lucid dream I had this morning right before I woke…

Now I often wake with ideas or songs in my head and often they flee as quickly as they came, but this dream has been sitting in my head all day…I had dreamt of a disaster that has been a small obsession of mine since I was young, and as I spoke to Vlado it occurred to me that the dream was a sort of metaphor for the current state of the USA… I had dreamt about the Titanic. [Not the film with Leo Dio and Kate W., but the disaster itself - as if I were on that boat]

The grandest technological accomplishment of its day – a triumph of man over nature - a ship said to be unsinkable! But on that day in 1912, the arrogance of man’s imagination of progress and indestructible grandeur was fully brought to bear.

Naively believed to be unsinkable, the huge, impressive, modern accomplishment (USA?)speeds blindly into an iceberg (“W”?).

Even once the ship is mortally wounded, most passengers in their arrogance refuse to believe that the ship could go down – after all haven’t we been told it is unsinkable (the most powerful country in the world?)?

While some quickly seeing the writing on the wall fled for the lifeboats, many seem annoyed at any disruption in their luxury trip and attempted to keep up the charade that everything was OK.

Meanwhile, those in steerage class began to see that they would soon perish and tried in vain to get to safety, but their inevitable fate was already a sealed along with them in the very bottom of the ship even as the water was rising around their feet.

While the most wealthy are ushered to safety (“bailed out” if you will) with some even donning disguises to beat the most vulnerable to safety (Madoff ?), the weaker and less fortunate are left to fend for themselves (Katrina victims?), or at the very least to fight tooth and nail for their very survival (auto industry?).

When it becomes clear that there is no saving this majestic ship, hundreds begin to push to get to the too few safety boats, without recognition that it was their own inability to earlier realize and correct their dual error – 1) putting their trust in an ill prepared, disinterested captain and crew and 2) their slow realization that the ship is sinking – that left them too late to save themselves and others in the face of inevitable disaster.

As the ship sinks, the band plays on (lingering Bush-ites?). While some are saved, most will perish, including nearly all the poor along with many wealthy and many more middle class passengers.

So is Bush the iceberg or the captain? Is the iceberg the wars, financial crisis, environmental disasters, Guantanemo, etc.? Did the captain and crew miss the warning signs that forced the ship into the iceberg, or did they ignore them with arrogance? As we look back in retrospect can we see all the minor mistakes and warning signs that could’ve stopped the collision? Do the ships that were close by, but failed to intervene to help the Titanic in time to save more people represent those of us who took too long to speak out? I need to think about it some more.

When I told Vlado about this dream he said “But this time the boat will not sink! Obama has answered the SOS call. He will save the ship.”

Oh how I wish this were possible. But it seems to me that even while I fully believe that Obama is honest and well intentioned that it is more likely that he is bailing the ocean’s water rushing into the sinking ship with a mop bucket.

Maybe I am reading too much into this dream, forcing an ill fitted or overly simplistic metaphor, but all the same, it is haunting me somewhat. It reminds me of the cliché “there is nothing new under the sun” in the sense that so many of history’s disasters seem to follow similar trajectories. We imagine ourselves so advanced, so learned, but we keep making the same mistakes over and over. I have little hope for the human condition, let alone for our nation.

Obama is our greatest hope – both for the nation and for the image of the nation in the broader world, but it is just so much for one man. As the world pins its hopes on Barak Obama, I hold my breath and hope for the best. The fact that there is a person with whom it is possible to reinvent the image of the US abroad is both exciting and scary. It would take a super-human – a “hero” – to do all of the things each of us hopes he can do. But maybe…just maybe…maybe it is time for such a hero. Can one person spark enough change to change the trajectory of the nation and the world? Or have be passed the point of no return?

I for one hope that Obama is the one who will lead us all to think and act differently. He cannot change the world on his own, but it is possible that he can inspire enough people to act in great ways that we can bring about change. Obama cannot bail the water fast enough on his own, but if his earnest work and thoughful leadership can inspire people to pitch-in, maybe we can save this ship.

I did not think it was possible, but I hope for Vlado, and all the world that he represents that we as a nation will be inspired to sacrifice, get our hands dirty, and work hard to keep the wounded Titanic afloat so that we can build a better boat for the future.