Just a week ago, Barack Obama was struggling. Caught between a deadlocked and partisan Congress, Obama was dealt a crucial loss on a trade bill on which he had invested a great deal of political capital, this time facing with opposition coming from his own side of the aisle. When you factor in the shooting in Charleston, the need to (re)ramp up our military presence in Iraq, the looming threat of Obamacare being deemed unconstitutional, the president looked uncharacteristically weak.
And yet here we are just one short week later, wrapping up one of the most impressive weeks in recent memory, certainly in the brief tenure of my political awareness. I mean the man is the Teflon Don (Rick Ross lost the right to this nickname at his arraignment last week). A biracial John Gotti. I mean, have you seen that eulogy? Who knew he had pipes like that? Exactly what was needed as America continues to unravel the issues around race and tolerance.
The singing was unplanned by the way. When you throw in two sweeping Supreme Court victories and the potential for the success of his nuclear accord with Iran, Obama might have just gotten bailed out by Ray Allen, nailing the corner triple to send Game 6 to OT.
Also, yeah, if you didn't hear, same sex marriage just got legalized. So beyond solving a basic issue of humans rights and finally providing a sliver of that star spangled freedom that we love to brag about, the most striking part of the moment for me was the realization that 40 percent of the country still opposes this very simple, black and white (in my mind at least) issue. While I recognize people have a limitless capacity for ignorance and intolerance, it just seems crazy to me that there are millions upon millions of Americans who are still dead set on showing up on the wrong side of history.
The argument is over, the Supreme Court ended it on Friday, same sex marriage is now ubiquitous and here to stay, and yet there are millions of people, and indeed, each of the GOP’s presidential candidates, who are refusing to acknowledge that this matter is settled, yelling loudly and stubbornly shaking their fists at the sun.
At this point, it should be clear how social progress moves and that an increasingly inclusive and tolerant social culture is here to stay. America does not flip flop on these issues. We are not regressing to a society that enforces segregation nor one that denies women suffrage and a familiar pattern can be seen in each of the social movements that have improved the lives of discriminated Americans throughout the last century. For each movement, there is a counter movement, and the opposition to these inevitable and necessary social improvements are infamous, representative of archaic and discriminatory social norms and remembered as such. History remembers George Wallace, famously blocking the doors at the University of Alabama to bar black students, but history does not remember him fondly.
And so I would ask that 40 percent of America, given that same sex marriage is here to stay, how do you want to be remembered? The opposition to gay marriage is over, the issue is settled (legally at least), you lost and you can either move on or you can stay out there in the sun stubbornly shaking your fist at the sky.
