President Elect Barak Obama!

What a pleasure it is to type those words in that order and know that it’s a description of a person who actually exists. A fact instead of a jinx.

I keep waiting to wake up, and at the same time realizing that we are finally waking up from the nightmare.

While listening to President Elect Barak Obama’s speech last night, my mind would occasionally flash to an image of our still current president, and a reversal of a bit of Hamlet would ring through my ears: “So excellent a king that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr…”

I am filled with a sense of purpose that exists on two channels:

1. Hyperion Obama is right. All we have accomplished at this point is the securing of an opportunity to change things. The real work starts now. He is not some sort of messiah or national magic negro. He’s our community organizer. We’re his community. So get organized. Get to work. Look around you. How did this happen to this place? Clean it up! Fix it! He’s calling us to service. Answer!

2. We MUST learn not to let what happened to this country in the last eight years (or more) happen again. We are ALL culpable. It was not the fault of the “red states.” Get past that. There is a good chance that we will one day look back and think fondly of the Bush years, cause they were so much better than the Palin administration. Obama is opening the door to a change that will make the divisive politics of the past a permanent part of the past. To make this stick, we have to find ways to reach out to the people on the other side of the alleged cultural divide in this country and find ways to talk to them. This is not a time to gloat. This is a time to reach out to the MILLIONS of Amearicans, who are terrified that we just handed the keys to the oval office to a racially inferior, old-school socialist, cryptomuslum terrorist. To call them ignorant losers is not what the country needs right now. We need to find a way to allow them to open up in ways that they are going to find difficult. Those of us who are not scared must find ways to help those that are. If we do not, then we leave them open to the schemes of those who would manipulate that fear for their own political gain. The divisions that divide us go deep. They are not going to go away easily. The fact of Obama’s election is one of the best footholds we’ve had. Let’s put some weight on it, and put it to work. This is not his job. This is our job as citizens. He’s got other fish to fry. He has to save the world.

This is possibly the highest quality human being we’ve elected in a really long time. Let’s not waste the next four years on wishful thinking, and unsupported expectations. Don’t ask him to help you. Help him.

We now have a real leader.

Let’s get out there and see what this United States thing can do…