I can't believe that Barack Hussein Obama is now the President-Elect of the United States of America. He still has 75 days till he's sworn in on January 20, 2009, but come what may, he has created history. He is the first African-American to become president, and he did in fine style, running a campaign that was lofty in its ideals, superb, clean and clinical in its execution, and all-inclusive in its reach. It was the first campaign by anyone running for any office, that I can remember, that I supported and got behind (in my own way, namely through copious amounts of hours logged on CNN), not because the campaigner supported and represented my politics and world view, but......
...and this isn't easy for me to admit......
....because I BELIEVED in it. Him. The message. The hope. The possibility of change, him reaching beyond this election to what he could do in office, with the backing of his party and the MASSIVE groundswell of support that he garnered from all levels of the society. I believed in the whole shebang, swallowed it down hook, line and brightly coloured sinker, and I now wait with bated breath for his presidency to begin.
I saw Jesse Jackson crying on CNN (I keep mentioning that channel, hmm...maybe I spend too much time there)...I can't imagine what seeing this must be like, for him and persons like him, that were alive for, and marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Who, despite the myriad twists and turns their lives and actions might have taken, fought for civil rights for themselves and their race from second to second, unceasing and unflinching in their belief and support of their principles. It must have been a sweet and painful moment for him, and the millions of others like him, not just in America, but worldwide. Not just black Americans, but anyone who's stood in the breach in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and overwhelming circumstance, in defiance of what most others just look on and pass by as an unchangeable status quo...it must be a very rewarding moment for them all, but also painful in the enormity of the various emotions that they must be feeling, one and all.
Think about it. America now has a black president, one with the middle name of Hussein. If you had told me that last year or eighteen months ago, that that would be the case, well....I'd have smiled with you while secretly calling the guys in white coats and the padded wagon on their 24 hr emergency line to come and fetch you, and then, that done, would have calmly gone on my way in a manner designed to not upset you, as you were obviously off your rocker.
But, you'd have been prophetic.
Heh, will wonders never cease.
*shakes head in wonderment*
However, all of that aside (and that's a massive aside, btw) that isn't the purpose of this post. With all of the happy happy joy joy feelings now floating around the country and around the world, there is one very large problem that I now have (when do I not, ever), coming out of this election.
Simply put, that crowd......or rather, what they were/are indicative of. You all saw it, the crowd at McCain's concession speech. Rowdy, angry, disrespectful, and most of all, convinced as to Obama being a traitor/Muslim/liar/socialist/black (oops, he really is that, sorry), and whatever else they want to accuse him of. McCain could only just control them for the cameras, as he plodded at a slow run through what must have been the most painful speech of his life (and may it stick in his throat for a long time, the louse), and then quickly and quietly vanished from the public view, to become yesterdays news in so many ways....but the effects of the campaign that he and mizz Sarah Palin ran are not so easily erased. All the fears that they played on, all the anxieties and misplaced rage that they stirred up, all the vitriol and acid that they spouted, robocalled and had pandered to willing, ignorant, misled ears around the country...that does not just vanish over night, with a forced concession speech and a pained smile.
Oh no. That kind of emotion lingers, festers, goes home and oils its rifle, and then begins to look for a nice steeple to inhabit. The level of idiocy that was being spread behind the scenes about this election, like a disease of ignorance (whose major symptom is a certain pigmentation of the neck, I believe, but I could be wrong), spreading from person to person, family to family.....there were sites and noted (and notable) radio personalities that claimed, and presented (to their twisted, malignant brains), insurmountable proof that Barack Obama was the antichrist, and a vote for him was a vote for the apocalypse.
I mean seriously. Come the F*** on.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?!?
*stops to ponder the unfathomable nature of it all*
I don't know how that kind of thinking works. I don't know how one gets up and decides to use such tactics, I don't know how one then decides to implement those tactics in these modern times.....and then I, most of all, don't know how one hears these things, and, IN THESE MODERN TIMES, believes them. Like......I just can't process it. The levels of desperation and hatred, just raw, blind, ignorant (wow I'm using that word a lot) bad mind (as we say here in Ja, and its usage is so apropos) that had to have been behind it, and the dozens of other 'fringe' (read:grassroots, base or any other term used to refer to that special set of people for whom Sarah Palin is the best thing to happen to politics since Bush, whichever one, it doesn't matter) organizations and movements out there that actively, willingly and knowingly looked at this information, knew what it meant and the ramifications of it (come on, I don't believe that idiots could have implemented this thing, someone with sense had to have been behind this somewhere......where, however, is left in its entirety up to your speculative abilities), and STILL WENT AHEAD AND DID IT......that kind of black-minded bloody-mindedness (probably a wrong use of the phrase...ah well, C'est La Vie)......well, lets just say I don't approve of it, and leave it at that. Not like my opinion matters, to the thousands, hell, millions of Americans that are now sitting at home and at the local bar and in their friends houses and in public places, watching Barack Obama take his place in history, not with an appreciation of the gravity of the moment or of the fact that there is now someone in the white house that wants to do more than mangle the English language on tv and invade other countries and throw the nations young and newly arrived (the citizenship for army service program...democracy at its finest) for oil....but with all of this idiocy and so much more stuck in their heads. On repeat. With the volume maxed.
Leaking out of their ears and surrounding them, like a black and purple aura of poison and decay. Traitor (as is anyone that doesn't recommend shooting America's multitudinous 'enemies' these days). Muslim (and all the negative connotations that THAT brings to these folk, gah). Black (you know they're thinking it). Socialist (..and if this section of the population were a bit more in touch, they might look at so called socialist societies that were named, such as Sweden, and Denmark, and Holland, and see how these places are so VASTLY superior to their own.....but lets not look for too many riding beggars here, eh?), and god knows what else. Oh yeah. Antichrist. That one needs no snarky commentary in an intrusive set of parentheses.
What do you think they're thinking, watching him and his family walk around, wave at the cameras, smile at his daughters and promise one of them a puppy in his acceptance speech? These people, lovers of the constitution, liquor and their extensive rifle collection...(ok, that's not all of them, but it is enough of them for me to generalise the rest of them as being the same way....and if they're in this group, then I don't really see where I have to take special care HOW I classify you, you dumb..).., who now claim that Obama will trample all over the constitution (and what the hell do they think that George W. Bush was doing for the last eight years, spit shining it?), and bring fire, brimstone, a dozen plagues, the apocalypse, a new holocaust (I'm not even going to go INTO that one, uh uh, not this individual) and maybe, oh, I don't know...respectability, grace and, oh, can it be HOPE, INTELLIGENCE and RIGHT MINDEDNESS to the whole process of governing of the greatest (in terms of potential to influence events on a worldwide scale from a single nation standpoint) nation on earth?
What's that you say? Bush was smart enough for you? Well, if you put it like that...step right this way, there's a bridge I'd like to sell you. Speaking of which, who else finds it ridiculous that you can buy islands, both real AND MAN MADE, houses built underwater, trips into space and real estate on the moon....but the saying 'I've got a bridge I want to sell you' is still a worldwide analogy for gullibility and stupidity.......anyway.
So yeah. That's my desire in this post. To express my....deep seated concern regarding the, almost in counterpoint and in abject contrast to the groundswell of love, support and hope for the future that Obama has created in the American people, the just......saturated population of haters and ill-wishers of Obama and his family. We've all seen what one angry American, supported by a system where anything (and I do mean anything) can be garnered for enough money or in support of a like-minded individual, and apathy towards how one uses that anything, can create. I do not think I need to extrapolate on this. American history, both recent and distant, is rife with these individuals (Lincoln and JFK come to mind...and dammit if the news media have not been comparing Obama to JFK for a minute now).
Even beyond that, however, will be the fact that these people will, in blind support of their negative ideals and backward thinking leaders, will, in so many ways, obvious and covert, stand in the way of Obama and all that he and his supporters will try to do. Now, in a time when America needs to be unified, as it has a laundry list from hell of situations to solve and obstacles to overcome, both within the nation the world at large, not the least of which is the contempt it is held in, both as a nation, and as a people, that elected and supported the (previous) leader of that nation. Now, more than ever, Obama's campaign rhetoric needs to be repeated, in quiet conversations and at the tops of voices at outdoor rallies.....'yes we can!'
Not as a nation of people electing a black president (y'all just did that, remember, did you drink so much last night in celebration that you FORGOT why you were celebrating.....if so, shame *wags finger in reproach*) or being governed by one....but as a nation of people needing to move forward together behind an (insulting classification of citizenship deleted)-American leader to begin to repair the economy, the myriad of foreign policy disasters visited on the world by G. W. Bush and Dick 'Darth Vader' Cheney in the past eight years, a government with more power over its people than a dictator would find comfortable (...actually no, he'd be just fine with it), and a prison filled as a result of an occupation of a foreign nation, an occupation based on reasons less insubstantial than wet tissue paper in the face of a category five tornado.
If you get my drift.
So that's my concern at this time. I can't be caught up in the euphoric celebration of Martin Luther King's dream being fulfilled (and if you believe that, here, this rope bridge is going cheap, comes with a gorge and a nice long fall.....), I'd rather think about the next 75 + 1461 days (not thinking about the 2012 ticket as yet, lets get past this mountain first). Its that long till he's sworn in on January 20th and becomes president, and then that next figure is the length of his (first :) ) term as president. Its a very long time to be the one BLACK man at the top of the world. Sittin' on nukes....and a throne made out of blades.
I do not envy you, good sir.
More as it develops.
