Con Anniversaire

Today is the first anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States and the election returns yesterday in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, soaring budget deficits, the loss of 4.2 million jobs in the U.S. economy in 2009, an unemployment rate of 10 percent, unmanned drones killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghan troop escalations, inertia as a response to Israel's obduracy towards the notion of self-determination for the Palestinian people, bank bailouts redirecting funds from the worst off and the failure to close Guantanamo Bay... ALL of these mean that the romance has definitely soured.


I'm being honest here, I saw this coming, and not just because I remember the intoxicating days of 1997 when we had a new, young, dynamic, thrusting, impossibly moist and sexy Prime Minister in Tony Blair who, likewise, talked eloquently about effecting 'Change' (By the way, does anybody remember how that turned out? Anybody? Ah yes, it's coming back to me now... Blair turned out to be yet another lying, megalomaniacal, war criminal politician playing fast and loose with government at the expense of the nation's constituents). No, I knew it'd go tits up, because on Obama's inauguration day I got a text from an ex-girlfriend and I was able to parallel my rejoined relationship with her to his travails as president.


Let's call her 'Yachi'. She lives in Australia and I haven't seen her in well over a decade. We reconnected via Facebook and I was genuinely pleased that we were back in touch. I'd like to make it clear here that there was none of that 'flame still flickers' nonsense going on. We were very comfortable with where we were in life. Besides, I continue to transmogrify, day-by-day, like a caterpillar into a thoroughly breathtaking, and utterly pulchritudinous butterfly; whilst the passage of time has, regrettably, dragged Yachi down a very badly lit alley and kicked her face in. Repeatedly.


So inauguration day and she's all "Isn't this amazing?", "Never thought I'd see the day," and so on, and so forth and it IS amazing because she's on the other side of the world and we're in touch and she's dead funny. She'd let me know how things were with her daughter and her husband and her business and I'd let her know what was up with me and when she laughed I was transported back to a time when we were laughing together. It felt lovely and much seemed promised both for a new political dawn and a lovely mature friendship.


You know what's coming, don't you?


One day, a few months later, I got a text from Yachi telling me that she'd just been back through the history of my Facebook status updates (read them, if you have a spare weekend, they're quite the thing) and that she found me thoroughly despicable - a self-obsessed fop who plainly has emotional issues. She offered both a damning litany: detailing my imperfections and deficiencies and her hippy-ish nonsense/self-help prescription as a cure for what obviously ails me.


"What fresh lunacy is this?" I bellowed in a voice not unlike Brian Blessed. Internally, of course. I'm not totally unhinged. Who did she think she was?


Now, I'm a placid individual, but this remote commentary upon my very being agitated me severely. I mean, she's probably right. You think those things about almost everyone you encounter on a daily basis, but you don't actually tell them, do you? What kind of absurd, Kafkaesque world would that be? Can you imagine sashaying stylishly up to the window at McDonald's and the spotty faced assistant asking if you'd like some self-esteem with your fries? Ridiculous. I don't need 'friends' pointing out my shortcomings with such breathtaking frankness, that's what one's family's for. Besides what can one seriously glean from 'wall' postings filled as they are with almost exclusive reference to what's on TV, getting drunk and musings upon obscure, non-reproductive acts of coition? That would, essentially, cast every last one of us as couch-bound, alcoholic, sex addicts. Which is utter bollocks. Or not.


Anyway. What a crazy woman. Which, strangely, was precisely my opinion of her all those years ago.


Needless to say I de-friended Yachi in a hurry. I can do without someone that judgemental in my life, superpoking me with suggestions as to what underpins my escapist behaviour. The emotional process I went through in this episode - a crude bastardisation of the 5 step grieving process - mirrors almost exactly my response to Barack Obama's presidency: shock, denial, anger, disillusionment and, finally, acceptance.


A lot can change in just a year - disappointment upon disappointment heaped high can change a person and drive a stake squarely through the perfected image of those upon whom we have bestowed our deepest affection. That'll teach me to get my hopes up.


What in the name of Lord Brett Sinclair was I thinking?