A Barack Obama Revolution?

The ever-progressing march of freedom is unstoppable. The time is coming when humankind will shake off all oppression and oppressors at least as we currently know them. Some think this can and should be averted and spend a lot of time in dread that it will happen; I know it is not only quite necessary but also inevitable and spend a lot of time praying it comes to pass soon. I only worry that maybe it isn't just years or decades but maybe centuries or even millennia away.

After every POTUS election the new president-elect always professes that with this new Presidential Administration things are finally going to be different. We will at last have a government that truly knows its purpose is to serve the people, instead of the other way around.

Hillary captured the essence of this attitude somewhat comically way back when she was running against Obama and attempted to mock him, caricaturing his optimism in a speech, theatrically promising a laughing audience in Providence to "let's just get everybody together, the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."

Though it is common for a new POTUS and their handlers to cast their election as a revolution, I have never seen this behavior more pronounced than during Obama's campaign and post-election transition period.

A part of me really wants to have faith that the system works, that soon after Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden are sworn in on January 20th and the Inaugural festivities have ended, the American public can start cashing those checks for meaningful change that Obama has been writing for the last couple of years through his campaign promises.

I want to believe that though the Government is made up of humans—and because to err is human there will probably always be some corrupt, ineffectual or otherwise flawed officials, laws, programs and bureaucracies—nevertheless the Framers were genuinely inspired by divinity. Though I don't call myself patriotic, I want to believe what every hard-line jingoist already does, that the American political system is special and has what Chinese philosophers call the Mandate of Heaven.

I want to believe there is something particularly just about American justice; that there is something particularly equal about American equality.

Then there is another undeniable part of me that I would experience no matter who got elected, even if my original candidate Ron Paul himself was about to be inaugurated. It is hard to believe it really matters at the end of the day who is POTUS and I know a lot of people personally who agree. How unwittingly fitting for Hillary—after having poked fun at Obama's message of hope—to go on to say, "Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."

The implements of the assorted forms of slavery of all people regardless of color or religion or gender or nationality are so insidious not only because they are invisible to those who only see with their eyeballs but also due to the fact that the chains are not held as much by modern-day bogeymen like the Rod Blagojevichs and Bernard Madoffs of the world, but are indeed held by the very masses said chains keep in bondage through the public's failure, for one reason or another, to adequately participate in their governments.

Those who know that the greatest obstacles to our liberation originate from within know that the human species still has a long way to go, that the degree of transformation required will mark nearly every facet of our lives and will run too wide and too deep to be brought about by such a superficial event within the big picture as a POTUS change.

It is my fear that the metamorphosis may require an upheaval such as to result in a break in the continuity of what I have heard called the Establishment that has heretofore been unprecedented within my lifetime. I wonder if it makes me patriotic that I will be sad if America loses her aforementioned precious Mandate.

Still, my pessimism is tempered by the exuberant vigor of the celebrations of Election Night. I will never forget the lady from behind the deli counter at Wallingford QFC excitedly telling us that employees upstairs in the break room have called down to say that it was just announced that Obama won. There was an electricity in those grocery store aisles, and in the streets coming home when I could hear the sounds of fireworks coming from all directions, that lasted for many days.

Watching a video of the impromptu gathering of people in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood right after the big announcement that made the rounds among my friends in the weeks following the election, I worry that all those who railed against the Bush Administration will rest on their laurels now that Obama has won, yet at the same time, seeing hundreds take to the streets in spontaneous dancing and celebration and knowing many more took to the streets with joy all over the nation, I cannot help but have a renewed faith in the place from which all government powers come: the People.