Time To 'Get Real'

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, a mere century and a half after the country
imperfectly and unwillingly shook off the idea that one man could own another, will be seen as a step every bit as significant as that of Neil Armstrong when he set his boot down upon the dead dust of our moon.

Not only significant for the election of a man with black skin, this election also marked the first time a candidate tried to hew to the road of adulthood, respect and reason. Whereas John McCain, out of desperation, yielded to the Rovian thuggery of playing to the lowest common denominator, Obama brushed off more than a few incitements to return the favour in kind.

Perhaps there is yet hope that people from a broad sweep of backgrounds, contexts and ancestries can join together to make common cause against the evils that are capable of tearing apart the fabric of their society.


We all know that the wolf is at the door, accompanied by wolverines and other predators, and we hear the not-so-distant strains of the piper. So we must gather ourselves together and work from our commonalities rather than our differences. Surely anything is preferable to the throat-grabbing, head-bashing anger that rose up in the dying embers of the McCain campaign, that marred his generous and eloquent concession speech. One wonders what might have happened if that one, the real McCain, had continued his electioneering, instead of the one that opened a Pandora's box of antagonisms and dislikes.

Coaxing hope out of the bottom will not be as difficult as it might have been first time around, however, for hope has been one of the keynotes of Obama's campaign. It is something positive and constructive to seize upon as a guide to the complex repairs that must be made to so many aspects of US - and global - business, society and industry, that were let slide in the mirage of the past eight years.

Yes, the US has a historic choice, a man whose skin is black.

Yet one feels that it is also important to note that this black man has no genetic or emotional associations to the desperate struggle that split the country for so many decades; he is not a descendant of slaves, nor of free black Americans, and thus comes to the table - to the presidency - free of any taint or motive from historic grievances, wrongs to avenge, or other unresolved issues.

In a way he is unique - an African American whose route to the table is not through the terror of slavery or the
long fight to overcome prejudice; who can undestand from first-hand experience what it means, yet by virtue of his ancestry has stood, paradoxically, to the side of both black and white American society and in it. Everyone - even those who voted for the Republican party rather than the man - should be prepared to roll up their sleeves and get to work without, for once, thinking about other people's politics, religion, choice of decor or ancestry. The damage done under the mindless watch of the albatross in the White House is severe and pervasive, whether in an illegally founded war upon the wrong country or the wholesale destruction of the financial sector. The next three months cannot pass quickly enough.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com