12 years ago, in America, Facebook was a complicated video game for a group of university geeks, mobile phones could at most take pictures. Electric cars whizzed only on golf courses, and Donald Trump was a TV personality with a past as an entrepreneur. The presidential candidates were two senators: for the Republicans a former hero of Vietnam loved also by the Democrats and for the Democratic party a young senator, the first black candidate in US history, also loved by whites. On election night all over the country parties and banquets were prepared from east to west coast, however it went it would have been a party.
In 12 years the world has made great strides, Facebook and social networks connect more people than there are on the planet, considering the dead and double profiles, and phones do everything, from videos to electrocardiograms but making calls is almost impossible. Electric cars whiz faster than petrol ones and don’t even need someone to drive them. In all this you vote by choosing between a “building” president and TV star and a former vice president both go for 80.
Nothing is left of the new that advances. Barricades are erected on the streets of America, from the shops of the metropolis to the plains of Texas, automatic weapons are loaded and private guards are hired. And all this is not the fault of the pandemic which (as only in America can happen) has remained, despite its charge of death, almost on the sidelines of the electoral campaign.
The Facebook geeks who hoped to get rich 12 years ago are now afraid they have become too rich. Those who voted 12 years ago hoped that their candidate would win, today they are afraid that the opponent will win. Those who hoped to be able to send photos and videos with their mobile phones in 2008 are now afraid that their phone will spread too much information and photos that end up who knows where.
Fear of electric cars has shattered gasoline prices. On the streets of America where you hoped to meet someone you knew now you are afraid of meeting anyone.
How did it happen to a country that founds its democracy on optimism, to pass in such a short time from hope to fear of the future
Who has replaced the watchword for a people who live by slogans
Twelve years ago a black president became president of the country that invented racial segregation. That bet won then has never been repeated again, not for fear of losing the elections but because the hope of winning them has been lost. Who 12 years earlier did months of unpaid volunteer work, this time at most made an effort to send the vote by post, hoping that it will not be annulled by the Republican judges of the Supreme Court.
Today, anticipating the apocalyptic fantasies of the most depressed of screenwriters, the president in office, in order not to leave the White House, fuels the urban riots, blows on the spread of the pandemic and has gathered around him thousands of people without masks, to exchange dangerous droplets.
On Amazon prime the documentary Obama Dream tells what we forgot too soon, yes leaders may fail but the hopes that America has entrusted to them are still there, even a little scared. Distributed by 102 Distribution around the world, its Amazon launch by Jeff Bezos coincided with a nightmarish election night in which pleasantries between winner and winner gave way to calls to revolt and allegations of fraud. Those who voted then had the opportunity to choose between a spotless knight and a young senator with clear ideas and dark skin, remembering it can remove the fear of the future and transform it into hope, which has been too much fear.
