And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. “
…
Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
— Genesis 19:17, 24-26 (KJV)
If the Obama campaign entails a fairy tale, then my own bit of magical thinking involves the conviction that if we could only collectively suspend our disbelief for just long enough, if we can just have faith that something new can transcend what was, then we can cross the chasm that divides our nation. But like all magical thinking, there’s also a catch: to walk on thin air we must, all of us, believe it together. Open our eyes, and the magic breaks. The hopes that buoy us halfway across proves more fatal than staying exactly where we are.
Rationally, of course, I don’t quite believe this story. All politics are in the system, and all our politicians merely players. But I also believe in mankind’s occasional capacity to transcend itself and its own institutions. I’ve always considered JFK a rather bad President by the merits, and yet his overall power to inspire was clearly greater than the sum of his policies and actions.
Presented with the opportunity to move forward and leave behind our place of damnation, how many of us would nonetheless do as Lot’s wife did — whether out of fear, doubt, perhaps even mere nostalgia? How many would look back?
This Presidential campaign isn’t a battle between black and white: it is, as Obama himself observed, about the past versus the future. And the forces of the past — whether in the guise of Hillary Clinton or Jeremiah Wright — keep shouting, “Look back! Look back! You are doomed by the weight of the heavy hand of history.”
Perhaps we are. But I will keep walking this chasm, my wide-open eyes firmly forward.
