Today’s comic - Page Three of Meet the New Boss - is a throwback to another election, 700 years ago now. When the news announced that Obama had won, I was sitting in the pax terminal at Hickam AFB (not AAS, as depicted in the comic) waiting to deploy. My Platoon Sergeant and one of our Squad Leaders had this same conversation - it was the happiest I’d ever seen either of them. Then we all filed out onto the tarmac and on our way to Iraq.
It’s hard to feel the same degree of elation after this most recent election - mostly I’m glad I didn’t find myself on the street in uniform with a gas mask and fixed bayonet. We must not, to quote one of history’s great anti-fascists, assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Still, if it is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, then it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.