Obamanation!

What happened to our great nation?

It’s been less than a decade yet so much has changed for the worse. We find that our sons and daughters are losing their lives for a questionable cause. We watch as the citizens of a country we were supposed to set free wallow in violence and despair.

And the world stands by with contemptuous eyes as our laws condone the torture of inmates and habeas corpus is treated as something that gets in the way of “freedom”.

Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?

And then we remember.

It was 9/11. It was the horrific and unjustified nature of that event that prompted our hysteria. We needed to make someone a target. We needed to make sense of it all. But most of all we needed to be sure that it would never happen again and in the process foolishly positioned ourselves in a more vulnerable place than before.

Many of us feel that it’s too late to turn things around. But that’s the thing about times like these; within the hopelessness lies a great opportunity.

It’s a chance to make a change when the naysayers are pre-occupied. A chance to experience the kind of history we achieved during the civil rights movement. To take fifteen steps forward after ten steps back.

So how do we catch this ray of hope? It’s coming up in the 2008 election, where for the first time in history we can elect a president who not only represents the virtuous ideals of an America seemingly lost but represents us in another way as well.

To put it bluntly, well, he looks like us.

We are not a country of one race. We are not a country of one religion. Our diversity is what this land was founded upon and yet the world is sneering at us as if we all believe that the poor don’t deserve to be rescued from catastrophes and those who pray more than once a day should be stamped out, war after war after war.

Not a good strategy so far.

Here’s a better plan. We elect a representative who embodies inclusion rather than exclusion, intrusion and persecution (with no prosecution). We elect a president that personifies the ability to reach across broken lines of communication and show everyone that America believes in equality, fairness and the kind of freedom you can’t enforce militarily.

Not only that, he is able to complete a sentence and is quite eloquent to boot.

His background is in Constitutional Law, and he reminds us that it’s times like these that adherence to The Constitution is most needed. So that things don’t get out of hand.

He has experience working for the betterment of the poorest in our nation. Which, if he were elected, would immediately appeal him to billions across our globe, making our country a safer place.

Let’s face it. We need a hero.

And by hero I don’t mean the “cowboy” kind. We need someone who can save us, not make things worse. Has anyone every wondered what happened to the cowboy’s family when he went off to shoot the “bad guys”? They drowned when the levee broke.

May that never happen again. May we never watch as our building’s crumble and may we never stand by as our own citizens drown in our unprepared-ness. And, I’m going to say it, our prejudice.

That’s just not who we are anymore. We are a county of inclusion. We are the melting pot of the world, ready to choose the right person for president not only because he is the best for the job but because he represents all of us. Because he gives us and the world hope for a more peaceful future.

Because after all that’s happened we need his kind of “audacity” to get ourselves out of this great big mess.