in which i gesticulate wildly and wish i could calm down

I know I’ve said this repeatedly in the past, and I never follow through, but this time I mean it, goddammit: I need a break from political news. Either that, or I need to renew that Xanax prescription that I scored in October when I called my doctor’s office complaining of “pre-election insomnia.”

During the election, when I was up to my neck in Salon articles, Daily Kos postings and New York Times editorials and hanging breathlessly on every word of the divine oracle Nate Silver, I often imagined the future I was hoping for. In it, Obama had of course won, and I could release my white-knuckled clutch on the fate of the country. I’d listen to ten or twenty minutes of NPR in the morning and maybe a few more in the late afternoon, and when the President spoke, I’d relax at the sound of that deep, sonorous, confidently reassuring voice, knowing we were in good hands. Then I’d go back to reading novels, writing ethnography about Mennonites, and watching DVDs of Arrested Development, the only pleasurable form of Bush-era nostalgia. Eric and I would chuckle to each other: “Remember when that ‘Mission Accomplished’ joke was fresh? Ahh, good times, good times.”

In fact, I had no model for imagining how my level of political engagement might take shape under a decent Democratic president, let alone a figure like Obama. Look at it this way: I was sixteen years old when Clinton took office. My parents were Democrats, and Clinton seemed like a decent bloke, so I was happy enough to have him there. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, however, I was more or less consumed with figuring out myself: my education, my career goals, my love life. Sometimes I ranted about the hypocrisy of the “family values” crap, but mostly I coasted. I didn’t lose sleep over Newt Gingerich or the other Republicans in Congress leading the “conservative revolution.” I barely knew who those people were.

In a theoretical way, I knew that my security and my fortunes were tied to politics, that the society around me was held in place not by inherent stability but through the careful maintenance work of responsible citizens, by democracy. But when I look at all the college kids and early twenty-somethings who mobilized for the Obama campaign, it seems to me that many of them get it on a level that I never did at that age. The world has changed so much. Would I have been less conceptual and more applied in my understanding of politics, had I come of age under George W. Bush rather than Clinton? Or do middle-class kids who grow up in relative stability always enter their twenties with the complacency that I had, regardless of who’s running the government?

I don’t know. I did finally wake up, of course. The 2000 election left me genuinely devastated, and by the time George Bush took office I was awake and paying attention, with all kinds of new reasons to be pissed off. Then there was 9/11 and a major realization of my adult political life: Things can get bad. Like, really, really craptastically sucky. And nothing can be taken for granted.

So for a while, I fought like a citizen should. I went to marches. I wrote letters to my elected officials. And then it became apparent that this administration could not be reached through petitioning or collective action or anything that I could participate in. The more I knew about what was going on, the worst I felt. Sometimes I went for weeks without reading or listening to news. During the Bush years, a lot of the energy that I might otherwise have channeled towards political action went into just making sure that I and the people I loved were doing okay, holding on, hanging in there in spite of all the shit going on.

So now what? It turns out that the flip side to all this new and shiny hope and change—and it’s the hope and change thing that keeps me engaged; if McCain had won I’d be permanently curled around a jug of something cheap and red, pretending the world didn’t exist—is that being constantly engaged in what’s happening politically is bloody exhausting.

I have been meaning for the last week or so to write a post about how now that we have Obama in office, an imperfect but reasonable man with a brilliant mind and genuinely great intentions, we need more than ever to be politically active. The temptation is sit back, put all of our faith in Obama’s obviously remarkable abilities, and trust him to do a good job without our criticism, but that’s the last thing we should be doing, as it will ensure that the people who have his ear the most are the ones with the most money, which will not be very hopey/changey, and unlikely to produce the best possible Obama. We have to agitate, and organize, and when he screws up we need to let him know. No coasting. We don’t get a functional and healthy democracy just by electing a decent leader.

Yes, I do believe all this, very much. I think I may have just said everything I have to say about it for the time being, though, and anyway, my preachy side is not my most attractive.

I am a fairly passionate political animal, in case you haven’t noticed. I get embarrassingly over-the-top het up about everything. I’m sort of like that in general; apathy is not my strong point, unless we’re talking about sports. But lately I’ve been wearing me out. The week before last I was apoplectic over the House Republicans. Last week, I had fantasies of drowning the Senate Republicans in John Boehner’s vat of self-tanner. This week, I am stewing over the possibility that the stimulus package isn’t big enough and Paul Krugman is right about everything. I’m sick of caring this much. Can somebody tell me the secret to being tepid?

And don’t suggest healthy balancing activities like exercising and playing outside and throwing myself into the cooking of delicious affordable meals and cultivating crafty hobbies and contemplating the beauty of nature and poring over seed catalogs, because I already do all that shit and I’m still a deranged creature who snarls at the radio and emotionally invests myself in the fate of congressional legislation. Help me.