Election Results

I have a presentation for my Aristotle class in an hour, so I figured that I'd spend some time blogging on something completely unrelated in preparation. The election is over, and Obama will now be our president. And I'm happy for that.

When you get right down to it, no, I don't believe any of his promises. I don't believe any politician's promises; in fact, I consider most people period to be untrustworthy (at least due to competence, if not to outright deceit). So I don't see why that affects Obama more than anyone else. And I am quite fine with his elitism; some people are just better able to handle things than others. Democracy is a necessary evil, as far as I'm concerned. But there are two reasons in particular why I am glad that he was elected.

First, it is good to have an African-American president. When you get right down to it, the leader of a country is important for their symbolic value at least as much as for what they can do, and perhaps even more so; after all, it's still Congress who makes the laws. It's hard to say that we're a diverse country, although every single one of our presidents has not only been a rich white male, but also of either German or British/Celtic stock. That just screams inequality somewhere, and electing someone with a darker shade of skin is at least a preliminary step toward giving a different appearance. The different appearance in turn such encourage more minorities to get involved in the nation, hopefully leading to a more diverse representation in government. So, will all of this happen? Who knows? But if you don't give it a start somehow, then there is no way that it will happen.

Secondly, I must say that I enjoy seeing the pissed off conservatives. Hooray for tearing down the golden conservative calf! Maybe when people see that the country is still standing in 4 years, the Evangelical church (in general) will reconsider their America-worship.... nah. Maybe I'll just be stuck listening to people whining about how abortion is the worst evil of all time while they ignore the widows and orphans.

Ok, that was a cheap shot, which I'll probably regret making; but I'm getting really sick of the pious blogging and Facebook status messages.