Paper presidents 

I love books, but not so much what’s on the bestseller list. Used books ignite my imagination. They have been pre-warmed by the hands of other readers. They open themselves more gently than the stiff spines of chart-toppers where blurbs always crackle and sputter about nothing like this ever having been written before.  

Seeking a new old read, I hiked to the Durango Library lobby to buy a donated sale book sponsored by the Friends of the Library. On my way out the door, I noticed the cart marked “free” offering rejected lessons in history, not in the making but rather for the taking.

I stopped to look. Four discarded newspapers from Wed., Nov. 5, 2008, each one carefully sealed for preservation in a mylar sleeve, virtually untouched since publication. One of the headlines announced, “CHANGE HAS COME.” Another captioned two words in bold black letters, “AMERICAN HISTORY.” I can still feel the national excitement that rocked our country back then, when an election “shattering a racial barrier” emerged as a “senator from Illinois is voted president.” 

It turned out to be a fleeting nostalgic reverie, because as I headed back to the car, reality gave me the finger. Politically, we ain’t in that optimistic frame of mind anymore. Of course, even in 2008 while an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrated voting for a long-overdue realignment of cultural barriers, a disgruntled minority stood in the background still maintaining that a darker White House only signifies trouble for our country. 

Culturally, America benefitted from those years of change with a growing sense of racial diversity, marriage equality, affordable healthcare that embraced a woman’s control over her own body, and a surge in confidence about foreign policy. Many conservatives argue that economic and political leadership of that presidency lacked the Midas touch, but at least we weren’t making history by threatening to lynch the vice-president. 

As I drove my newspapers home, I considered our culture wars, how systemic change ebbs and flows, but more like my mother used to claim, as slow as molasses in January. And isn’t it curious and perhaps not coincidental that presidential inaugurations also take place in January, when the newly elected president swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. Nothing else has actually been accomplished by that time besides celebrating a platform of campaign promises. Even so, the oath is seen as an essential step, as if to say first and foremost, the Constitution is NOT to be disregarded.

Over a million Americans showed up in 2009 to witness a peaceful transfer of power, to participate by watching from a distance as expectations for change swelled. But history is fickle. Now when I close my eyes I can see the new mob of insurrectionists attacking the Capital, pushing past barriers to assault police officers with mace and pepper spray, beating them with flag poles, desecrating “the People’s House” in their attempt to illegally interfere with the constitutionally enshrined certification of legally tendered ballots after an election takes place. 

The politically motivated claim that our 2020 election was rigged has been hovering for years, repeated like a mantra since 2012, and by so many of our duly elected officials while apparently accepting their own victories as legitimate. It smells like smog, like an actual inversion of the truth, and as we breathe, it acts upon us until we can’t tell the difference between the good air and the bad. It’s a cancer corrupting our emotional and intellectual health, a kind of political climate crisis that has affected so many who stubbornly insist that any trivial election irregularity can be fabricated as proof that the entire election doesn’t count. 

If I hadn’t found those newspapers, I might have forgotten that history is nothing more than change, or as George Orwell so clearly expressed in “1984,” his dystopian novel: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” 

I want to thank – and I mean this in good faith – the anonymous hands that left those newspapers as a donation. Not just for the thrill I experienced in finding them, but more importantly because they exist as evidence and testimony that so many others treasured the same day. To have so long ago carefully prepared the news for the future, a time capsule on a day that served as a kind of high-water mark to measure what our country is capable of achieving. I pray often, I really do, that these anonymous hands haven’t abandoned holding America up to the light for the praise it deserves. 

Of course, what scares me still possesses me: the symbolism. As the current caretaker of these historic newspapers, I can’t seem to shake that constant reminder that our reliance and hope for a better future can so carelessly be marked as “free” and forsaken so close to the trash.