So Obama won, predictably I think. The McCain/Palin ticket was truly the perfect embodiment of everything the world hates about the USA. But that is not the important thing here. What is far more significant is that the McCain/Palin ticket also embodied what so many Americans hate about their own country and that is why Obama won such an overwhelming victory.
The readers of this blog must know by now that I am under absolutely no illusions about the fake "change" which Obama pretends to bring to the USA and the rest of the world. But this election was about far more than reality. It was also about symbols, about hopes, however naive and misguided. The War Party, the Israel Lobby, the military industrial complex and corporate American got together and offered two puppets to the American people. But when a puppeteer offers a choice of puppets he also offers the people not only a choice of puppets, but also a choice of symbols. And while the election of Barak Obama is utterly irrelevant to the future of the puppeteers running the USA, it has, I submit, a huge importance for the American people who at least got to show the rest of the world - and themselves - the puppet, the symbol, they wanted to choose.
Only a person who has lived in the USA can really measure the social magnitude of the election of a Black (ok - half-Black, but dark skinned nonetheless) President. For a country founded on racism and which has a long and utterly appalling history of racism the election of Barak Obama is nothing short of a social earthquake. Simply put - there are still plenty of rednecks in the USA, but most Americans do not want to live in a "Republic of Redneckia". There is a basic truth which American Blacks now cannot deny: most American Whites are willing to vote for a Black president. Of course, this does not mean that racism in the USA is over, not at all, but we need to remember here a basic historical truth: symbols always fall before the reality which they represent. Even if Obama turns out to be the "Tom" which Colin Powell or Condi Rice proved to be, the victory of Obama is, I think, a huge victory for the American people and, in particular, White Americans who have unequivocally shown the world and themselves that they are not the racists which many cynics believed them to be. Again, the election of Obama is a huge victory for *White* America.
Sadly, I predict that Obama will be a huge disappointment for both White and Black Americans. In fact, I think that he will be a huge disappointment for everybody besides the Israel Lobby. Remember how "liberal" Clinton did nothing about health care, how he bombed the Serbs in violation of the UN Charter, how he put millions of poor Americans into the streets and trashed the already highly dysfunctional American Social Security system, how his entire administration was filled with Zionists from top to bottom? I predict that Obama will be a repeat of Clinton in all these ways.
Still, something has changed in the USA today. I think that my wife put it best. This morning when we woke up she said to me "you know, it will be easier to live among people who rejected McCain". I agree. By voting for Obama Americans have taken a first step towards rejoining the rest of the planet, the rest of civilized mankind. A vote for McCain would have shown that most Americans think of their country like an ugly trailer park populated by uncivilized, ignorant, frustrated and hostile rednecks.
The almighty lobbies which ruled America yesterday will still rule it today and tomorrow. No argument here. But at least the puppets which they will condescendingly offer to their subjects will not be drooling idiots like Dubya or the two clowns of the Republican ticket.
I would never have voted for Obama. In fact, I would never have voted in such a parody of democracy like a US Presidential election, if only because I am a foreigner (a "legal alien" in US parlance). But if I had to vote I would have given my vote to Nader (or Ron Paul if he had formed a third party - really a *second* one). But I am glad that Obama won.
It will be easier to live among people who rejected McCain and everything he stands for.
The Saker