November 5, 2008

By William Irwin Thompson

The historical aura that seemed to hover over Barack Obama when he spoke to the Democratic convention in 2004 has now proven itself to be no fanciful projection but an accurate perception of his unique arete and destiny. But the Daimon that merely hovered above has now moved into the calm and assured center of his being. As Obama spoke to the world at midnight tonight in Grant Park in Chicago, he stood in the moment in which yesterday becomes tomorrow as an entire epoch comes to an end.

For generations--from Nixon through Reagan, the Bushes and Cheney--Americans have suffered under old men who have locked the country in a saturnine leaden age of war and reaction. In the governments these old men owned and controlled, they spoke contemptuously of big government itself and made people look to the acquisition of wealth as their only hope for existence in a world of fear and terror they sustained to keep themselves in power. In this campaign, McCain tried every ignoble Rovian strategy he could adopt to mark Obama as a terrorist and a socialist out to take away the property that protected the white citizens in the suburbs from dark criminals and terrorists and distribute it to lazy welfare mothers in the evil liberal cities of the land. It was only in his gracious concession speech that John McCain reclaimed the soul he had sold to the devil to run for president.

So yesterday is an age ago, and if tomorrow is filled with new challenges and crises, at least the whole world can now look to them with a new face.