Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governatorship will soon be drawing to a close, amidst dismal approval ratings. Yet I recall that, as with perhaps no other vote I’ve cast since I reached voting age, I took pleasure in punching out the box next to his name on the old-fashioned data card – as a virtual thumb in the eye to “Gray” liberalism, its lack of political imagination, its disconnection from California the Idea. Perhaps you can vote with seriously considered joy, with realistic fantasy, and, if Arnold seems to have disappointed the state in many ways, that doesn’t mean that voting for him was wrong, or even that the faults and failings we attribute to him were more his than ours, or anything more or less than a necessary but insufficient moment in our political self-re-creation…
We dreamt we were voting for this guy:
And so we really were, even if he didn’t take his broadsword to the forces of all evil, or commandeer a Harrier and blow away the Crimson Jihad, or implacably (utterly without joy, fear, or any other distracting emotion) terminate the opposition. California may have needed a lot more than a single hero or the guy who played them so well, but we weren’t wrong to vote in favor of re-vitalizing our political process in part by drawing upon creative fantasy, projection, and belief, even the joy of creative destruction. It can’t get us the entire way, and it can lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and every kind of waste, disappointment, and incomprehensible conflict…
Yet some stunts do work out better than others…
It all goes to the same place anyway…
…yet we must keep the faith…
Tank you.
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who’s Anne Heywood?