And History Is Made

Last night, at precisely 9:00pm MST, I was at the Sonoran Brew House and had a Hefeweizen to my lips as I saw the polls in CA (among others) close and expected CNN to call a few more states. How shocked was I when they called the race! It was a moment akin to “Where were you when Bobby was shot” or “Where were you when the Challenger blew up?” I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

There’s little need to go much into depth here, since you can find any number of sources for your rants and raves about the election. I will say though that I was genuinely impressed by McCain’s grace (although frankly, given whom he is I expected nothing less) during his concession speech and equally impressed how much President-elect Obama gave the credit away and made his speech about the US and the people, rather than himself. I believe we’re entering a new phase in American politics and I’m pleased about the direction.

In honor of this new direction, I’ll be making a couple changes. My avatar on my favorite forums has been a whimsical Bush either as a pimp, or a crowned Nazi flipping us off or a gun-toting John McCain. I’m going to need something new. Additionally, the barbed wire header here on my blog will need to slip away as the constraints on our country begin to ease. I am also dead certain that President Elect Barack Obama would MUCH prefer that this blog was an all-CSS, non table layout with semantic markup and specialized techniques to maximize my rankings in the search engines. I’m certain of it.

One bitter note: I was distressed at the passing of several pieces of hate legislation, specifically targeting gays. At first it was really quizzical because, here we’re voting for tolerance and inclusion and yet we slap the GLBT community down.

Or perhaps we didn’t. Perhaps we simply, selfishly voted for the economy and the net results of 8 years of a hate-based divisive government has finally done it’s evil work. What then my friends?

Well, perhaps the answer is that along with a president that will focus on the economy, new directions in energy technology and our world status, we’ve hired a man that will assist our country in gently moving away from positions of hate, divisiveness and exclusion. Perhaps President-elect Obama will assist us all in moving towards a future that integrates compassion and inclusion into our capitalist democracy. Is it so much to hope, that with a fresh new direction comes a long awaited peace between people?

Is it finally time that we can stop wearing bracelets that say “What Would Jesus Do?” (clearly because the wearing has no damn idea), and actually GET that hate is not a family value? Instead of “Who Would Jesus Hate” which seems to be our international diplomacy baseline, can we not decide to ask “How can we assist?” Isn’t it about time that we took this nation, the greatest on all the earth, for a little spin and see what it can do if our efforts are more in line with the entire world, rather than just our own selfish desires?

I’m on the bus, hope you are too. I’m going to hope that there will soon be legislation on the table of both the federal government as well as localities that forever forbids denying the most basic of American gifts – the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness – in the form of marriage to people that don’t fit the so-called Christian model. I’m going to hope that in the years to come we will get past the antiquated and vapor-locked ideology that has choked our country for too long now. I’m going to hope that there is hope for us yet.

BTW: Obama ’12!
I hear CNN will be airing his announcement to run this morning.

roflmao: