i want my country back!

John McCain and Sarah Palin desperately want us to see the danger in electing a risky, liberal, unknown Democrat as our next President. Someone who doesn't see the world as they see it. Someone who is so different from "us" that he can't be trusted. McCain went off the rails last night with his divisive politics in the last (thank God) presidential debate by trying to link Obama to Acorn, accusing Acorn, and by association Obama, as "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." Seriously? A network of community organizations working to enfranchise poor people who are predominately minorities and first generation Americans by helping them get housing and voting rights? Who exactly is trying to undermine our democracy, Mr. McCain?

What happened to my America? My land of opportunity? What's happening to our huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

I have lived in the Northeast, the West and in the South. I have lived in Uganda, Indonesia, and France. And if there is one thing I have learned over and over and over again is that there is far more that unites us than divides us. People are people all over the world. And I am sick to death of the Republican Party trying to tell me otherwise.

From 1986 to 1999 I traveled extensively throughout the South, even living in New Orleans for a few months. But things changed after 2000. Life took me in a new direction, mostly overseas, but politics, too, took me away. We were no longer a rich, diverse country full of vibrant stories and varied experiences. We were red states and blue states, liberal coasts and a conservative South and heartland. We were divided by our different backgrounds, no longer united by love of our country and what it stood for.

In my college and post college days, the South was the land of Athens, Georgia, REM and the B-52s, The Indigo Girls' sweet ode Southland in the Springtime, Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Alice Walker's everything. It was muffalettas, The Maple Street Book Shop and the Neville Brothers at Tipitina's in New Orleans. It was the juicest fried chicken at Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room in Savannah. It was K.T. Oslin and Lyle Lovett, and Gordon Parks's gorgeous photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. It was my first Krispy Kreme donut, hot off the presses in North Carolina, and the mist that rose up and over the Habitat houses we were building in the Appalachian hills of Pikeville, Kentucky. It was flying over the New River in West Virginia with eighty-five-year old Five Dollar Frank, his one-engine Cessna, his two hearing aids, and my terrified sister. In 1986, I fell in love with the South. In 2000, we broke up.

In 2005, deep into the Bush and Karl Rove years, I drove with my sister and brother-in-law from Washington, DC to Hilton Head, South Carolina. Stopping at a roadside restaurant in North Carolina, my brother-in-law declared somewhat ominously, "this is Bush Country." At once, I felt dread that we would be exposed for the Northeast Liberals we were but also an overwhelming sense of loss. Because I once knew, even just a little, but since lost a place that holds so much magic and mystery, memories of struggle and despair from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and yet also a persistent sense of hope and renewal. A place so rich with history, creativity, culture, and beauty it can leave you breathless.

But a place that didn't seem to want my blue self around anymore.

I miss my country. I want my country back. Not just the blue states, but the purple ones and yes, the red ones, too. I want the rugged coastlines of the Northwest and the raucous fun of New Orleans. I want the gentile and rhythmic life of Savannah and the Low Country. I want New York City jazz and Nashville, Tennessee country; Seattle, Washington mountain grandeur and small town Minnesota warmth. And I want to be accepted in all of these places as simply a fellow American.

I want this:

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too:

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.

We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

-Barack Obama, 2004

I want my country back.