The Reign of Terror is Over

The Reign of Terror is over. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President of the United States, and Joseph Biden will serve as its Vice-President. And despite McCain’s gracious concession speech, the repulsive accusations, and suspicions raised, and lied told during the campaign are not forgotten or excused. They can be forgiven, I suspect, but the bitter taste they leave corrupts everything that follows from them. And Sarah Palin can go back to Alaska and try to learn something about the world she had the effrontery (the chutzpah) believe she could govern. Or perhaps she should pursue what she claims to do best: coach hockey. Her ascension to the Presidency haunted my waking and sleeping moments. I never quite believed we had elected the actor, Ronald Reagan, and I have avoided confronting the reality of George W. Bush for eight years. I have not listened him once on the radio or the television; whatever he says has no meaning because he hardly seems to understand what he is saying. At least I can now listen to the radio again. Once in my voting life (forty full years now) I knew a Republican who earned my vote, and the party drummed him out as soon as it was possible to do so: Charles Goodell, appointed by Nelson Rockefeller to fill the Senate term of the assassinated Robert Kennedy. I hope that the members of this administration—an insult to the party which Lincoln headed and Goodell represented—crawl back into their little holes and disappear from public existence. I hope that their existences become hard and that they know little personal satisfaction for the remainder of their miserable lives. When I think of them, I think of Amalek: do not for forget what Amalek did to you on the journey of the exodus from Egypt. And what Amalek did was attack from the rear, where the elderly and the weak were most likely to be found. Amalek is the perpetual enemy of the Jewish people: his lineage extends forward all the way to Haman and other tyrant’s whose names begin with H.

I awoke this morning to fresh air. I stood the same and taller, and I walked out for my newspaper and coffee with hope that my children will have the possibility of a world filled with hope, and courage, and the world of my children will not be filled with despair and misery. I think my daughters responded the same: the older voted for the first time, and the second texted me late to say that Obama seemed to have won. When I paid for my bagel, the server I regularly see handed me my change and said, “Have a good day.” I responded, I’m going to have a great day,” This particular server is African-American, she broke into a huge smile. She knew exactly to what I referred; she must have voted for Obama, too. The quality of her day, too, was changed by his election.

And the air was fresher for America having elected an African-American forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King. The catharsis I experienced was palpable; my whole body celebrated this brave new world with such people in't. And how ironic, that to save America, Americans have turned to a Black man to lead them out of the wilderness.

This little light of mine, well, I'm gonna let it shine, and shine, and shine.