Will the Real America Please Stand Up

It's down to Barack Obama and John McCain. The drama will play out now through November when not just a new President will be elected, but a new version of what it means to be an American.

One view offers inclusion, a strong middle class, standing in the world, an end to endless wars, choice for women and a hope for a new day in Washington D.C.

The other view offers exclusion, class privilege, standing alone in the world, endless war, government interference on women's reproductive rights, and more of the same in Washington D.C.

I remember learning about the founding of America in grade school and the great melting pot that we made up symbolized by New York City. Immigrants coming to these shores full of hope and work and from scratch building lives they couldn't have imagined in the bleak places from which they came.

It's a bit nostalgic I have to admit but I managed to keep this image of America with me through all my school days in the almost exclusively white, Christian, upper-middle class town of Sonoma to my mid-twenties and the truly diverse Los Angeles and years later in the cosmopolitan San Francisco.

I never thought about America as a mostly white, Christian sort of place but rather of people from all over, usually overcoming prejudice to find a welcome home here on these shores. Which is why the anti-immigration sentiment and violence is particularly shocking to me. History is made up of an endless stream of peoples migrating here and there from someplace else. To think of a country as the divine right of a certain nationality or religion seems ludicrous to me. Only to be outdone by people who truly believe God is on there personal side. What arrogance is this?

However I must admit that people have the right to their own image of America, no matter how distant from my own. They are fighting for that image with this election.

That's why I believe no matter how many people are loyal to Hillary, or turned of by McCain's liberality no one will risk staying home this time around. Everybody knows instinctively what is at stake and will fight to see his or her version of America come to light. Now November is a long way off and people's sentiment could change, but if I were either camp, I wouldn't count on it.

As Betty Davis states in All About Eve, "Fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a bumpy ride."