In 1861 a group of rogue states went to war with the Union based on the election of Abraham Lincoln, a man who believed that slavery was wrong. Some argue that it all boiled down to economics, as in “who will tend our fields, if not slaves?” Whatever the case may be, it wasn’t until 1865 and over 600,000 deaths later that the war was won by the north. Days after the end of the war, Lincoln lost his life, and racism raged in the United States for one hundred years or more.
Yesterday America elected another man from the Land of Lincoln, Barack Obama, to put another nail in the coffin of America’s tragec era. While it would take great effort for him to be as awful as his predecessor, it will take even greater effort for him to get us out of all of the messes that have been left for him. We live in a divided country, as Mr. McCain received approximately 47% of the vote. One can hope that of that 47% only a small handful were racists.
We have a huge ballooning deficit that will cripple our ability to address great problems of the day. We have troops at war in two – four countries, depending on how you count, and we have an economy that is in a recession that many experts believe will last from three to five years. If it lasts even three years, President-elect Obama will have great difficulty being re-elected. In the process of fixing all of the above, he might be able to deal with education, healthcare, and national infrastructure.
One thing he has already done has been to shatter the image that a black person cannot lead the country. Maybe next time it will be a hispanic or jewish woman. One could only imagine the day when our president is a muslim.
Frankly, the day that at this point seems most remote to me is the day our president is (openly) an Atheist.