I had some lovely things all ready to write along these lines: "I am an Xer. I have no faith at all in politicians (Pete DeFazio being the one exception). I know better than to hope that any of the real problems will be properly solved, I know better than to think that solutions attempted will be the ones I'd prefer or even in my best interest, but it is comforting to think that at the end of January, suddenly there will be intelligent people in the white house trying hard to actually solve problems instead of simply to make as much money for their friends and seize as much power for themselves as they can possibly get away with. I was going to say what a pleasant change that is, that while hope is too strong a word, it is genuinely nice to thick someone, while fallible would at least be trying to make things better instead of worse.

I'm not sure I can say that now, knowing what I do about the projected appointments and the deal with the devil that is courting Rick Warren and the Saddlebackers. The shine is already off and it's looking more and more like even my modest expectations aren't warranted. I know full well it could be worse. (My horrified Mother called me to complain about McCain picking Palin just the other day. I think the full horror of the bullet dodged finally sank into her moderate republican heart. Certainly the campaign "highlights" are much funnier knowing they lost.) still, I am less inclined to place what little political trust in the hands of someone willing to court a man who believes that pro-choice people are the equivalent of NAZIs and that gay folk are equivalent to *****. There is reaching across the isle and there is stabbing people on your own side in the back. I know which seems to be happening to me. Again.

I don't care what the official dates are for Boomer vs Xer. In my opinion, a Boomer has to have been of draftable age during the Vietnam War. Male or female, the hared experience of reacting to that war, of having friends, lovers and maybe oneself in danger is a defining feature. The reactions varied, but that defines them as a generation, I think. Watching Obama talk about his experience of having to build a sense of stability as a child in the midst of unstable family life, of building an identity for himself both as a man and a person of colour with no adult male role models of his own race? That's Xer. Being raised by hard working loving women while his father was off drinking and starting a franchise family? That's Xer. In a few days we will have an Xer president, a child of struggle who has experimented with drugs, who has learned to create order and sanity out of chaos, who has worked with poor people in ordinary neighborhoods and helped them try to get their lives together and improve their communities, a man who has earned everything he has through hard work and intelligence. It's a nice change from a child of entitlement and privilege who has spent his life being bailed out of one wrecked business or another, who has never known a day of want and has never had to work for a living or suffer the consequences of a single bad decision.

So it's already a mixed review for me