The end of an era

Last night two things of sorrow note took place. If you don't like long political rhetoric, you might as well skip on to the second thing, it's down a little ways and the paragraph is started out bold. The first, and more widely known, was that America elected it's first black president. The sorrow of this situation is not that he's black, but that his election was due largely to the fact that he was black. I can think of no greater racism than to vote for someone based on the color of their skin, regardless of how that swings your vote. What makes this even more sad is that Obama is not particularly impressive as an individual. The things he was saying and the stances he was making would not have won him the democrat ticket let alone the presidency had he been white.

About a month ago I made two speculations. The first was that I was quiet convinced that Obama would only loose if the democrat vote was split by a surge of write ins for Hilary. The second was that the greatest support for Obama would come not from higher age groups (indeed those are split more or less 50-50 with most of Senator Obama's votes coming from minority or African-American based populaces), but rather from those who are in the 18-21 age range. Those people who 4 years ago were 14-17 and have for the past four years seen nothing but South Park, Family Guy, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart representations of President Bush. For four years this age demographic's mind has been utterly poisoned with the presentation of a man (and by extension political party) that is impossibly dumb. So it is no surprise that this age range DID vote overwhelming in favor of Obama. To be perfelect blunt, the democrat party could have nominated a block of cheese and gotten an equally strong turn out.

I now make three suppositions.
1) Obama on the whole is a political pansy. (That's not the supposition part, that's a statement of fact based on looking at his political career, a completely lackluster record until his campaign for presidency when people suddenly began to sing his praise despite any evidence to support such praise.) Therefore I will be so bold to venture that the true power of the next 4-8 years will not be the president but rather the party leader in Congress.
2) Due largely to the efforts of the current administration to control the weak economy left by Clinton and the his foolish law that made it illegal for a bank to not give a loan based on credit history, Obama's term in office will be fondly remembered as a good time for America, but the person who inherits the Presidency from him will be faced with a second even more disastrous economic crisis than we are currently in.
3) For the next several elections it will be impossible for a non-minority to gain Presidency. Now, I must stress again that I have no issue with an African-American, Latino, or Asian being President, my qualm lies in them becoming President because of their ethnicity, furthermore I am equally opposed to a Caucasian becoming President only because his opponent was not Caucasian.

However, none of this is why it is the end of an era for me. For the second thing of sorrow that occurred last night was the death of Michael Crichton known for such books as "Jurassic Park, Lost World, Sphere, Prey, Congo, et el" and movies by the same title as well as "Twister". Michael Crichton has been a long time favored author of mine whose works I have long read and collected.

While it is certainly sorrowful that his life (of 66 years) came to an end last night due to cancer. The truly sad thing for me is his undeniably hostile (or at best indifferent) view of God. Indeed, it's hard to find a science fiction write who believes in God. It's almost a statement of pure contradiction in fact! After all, every sci fi writer believes on some level that man is inherently good and has the power within himself for self-improvement; that the notion of a high (non-alien) being is completely ludicrous. So it was that last night, to my sorrow, Michael Crichton joined the ranks of my other adored sci fi writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov in coming to know the pure horror of the wrath of God poured out on those who reject Christ's purifying work on our behalf.

The end of an era