The election of 2008 held historical significance in spite of the insipid outcome.
Of course the country was ready for a President that didn't fit the mold of bygone political eras... black, Oriental, female, Hispanic, or "other". It should have come into being long before 2008.
I was stunned into shocked disbelief, when in Oklahoma the first time in 1961, at seeing the segregated drinking fountains, restaurants and sections of towns and of being arrested when I was leaving a club on the "wrong" side of town after playing and told by the local police, "We don't want your kind around here!"
I too was elated and inspired by Martin Luther King and many others in the Civil Rights Era. Black pride is a wonderful thing!
My problem with this election has nothing to do with ethnicity!
What bothers me the most is the fact that, because of his associations and connections, Obama probably couldn't get a job as a night watchman at a Savings & Loan.
Ethics and good character started going downhill, in the not so distant past, when we began electing presidents NOT by what they could bring to the table in domestic and foreign wisdom but by whether they looked good on camera and had charisma. Without delving into ALL those elected after the advent of mass advertising of the candidates through televised debates and political commercials, Kennedy and Clinton come readily to mind.
Those phony "town hall debates" of 2008 with filtered questions and flattering or unflattering camera angles were just more "couch potato" fodder.
This has gone down the all-American path of instant gratification, billboard advertising, fast-food, if-it-feels-good-do-it, anything goes societal bog.
The dumbing down of America as it were. We let "Saturday Night Live" help choose the winner because that's as close to the issues that the majority of Obama voters ever got!
As far as I know we are the only country with "All-you-can-eat" buffets, families blankly watching "Dancing With the Stars" or "Survivor" re-runs and a system that absolves fault. We have attention spans so short as to be nearly non-existent...a population that in a recent poll over 60% said they would rather watch a travel video of Yellowstone Park than to actually be there and see it in person.
For whatever reason, apathy, Acorn, or abhorrence of President Bush, we let the decision of who would be leader of the greatest country in the world be chosen by college students and the lowest end of the economic scale dreaming of another "$$-in-the-mail" buyout (neither of whom have ever had a tax burden) along with Utopian dreamers who think the world would be a garden if everybody just got along!
Add those to the others who didn't want to be thought of as racist if they didn't vote for Obama.
(Do you think they know that NOT voting for McCain because he's an older white man is racism too?)
With all the above and the guiltiest of all, the lemmings that only honed in on the word "CHANGE" (with nothing to back it up except "Spreading the wealth by adding more tax on the successful".) we get all these clueless followers banded together in adoration to follow this political avalanche over the cliff.
For what it's worth they've given up something that works (and has, with it's ups and downs since 1776) to try something that sounds good, i.e. "CHANGE"!
This election and adoration of Obama reminds me of just how low the IQ of this country has sunk...This is NOT the people of a country who 250 years ago went to the barricades to fight a crack British Army practically shoeless, in the Winter with stones, bricks and pitch forks.
...AND WON!
