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BLACK FAMILY
IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Tuesday, 9.33 AM, 4th November,2008.
Americans are voting
to elect the first Afro-American president. The polls predict a landslide
for democratic candidate Barack Obama. History has come to full circle.
A black, whose ancestors were sold as slaves, becomes the commander-in-
chief of the most powerful nation of the world. A black family in the
white house, not as butlers and maids, but as the chief executive and
first lady.
In one sense this historic event is fulfillment of the spirit of the
American people. Their's is a nation dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal, regardless of religion, race, gender, language
or nationality. America doesn't bother about your past, it is all about
your future. As Barack Obama very eloquently put it 'America believes
that your destiny is not written before you are born'. It is a land
of opportunities and dreams-full of rags to riches stories. America
is the land of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King jr. and now Barack
Obama.
I was a supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But she couldn't make it
against the blitztering storm of this young Afro- American, an upstart
from the back waters of Chicago. With great determination, panache,
silver-tongued oratory and the sheer force of character this one term
senator from Illinois trounced the two terms New York senator and former
first lady. Then I expected that Obama having proved his point would
gracefully ask Hillary to be the presidential candidate and he as her
running mate.
Something like a
young African male brings and offers his trophy at the feet of his hereditary
chief. That would have been a great moral revolution in a culture in
which the winner takes it all. But Obama is a master champion, charmer
of masses, heartthrob of the young and harbinger of the future- fate
wanted him to have all the glory.
It will be historic: an Obama win. The love child, born on 4th August
1961, of a black Kenyan man and a Kansas white woman, in the enchanted
island of Hawaii. Obama is not fully black, but is of mixed race and
was brought up by white grand parents. For four years, in his early
childhood, Obama lived in Jakarta with his second father, an Indonesian,
whom his mother married. Obama had his education in California, New
York and got his doctor in Law from Harvard, where he was three times
editor of Harvard Law Review. He wrote his first book ' Hopes of My
Father' soon after. This autobiographical work describes his early life,
his community work in Chicago and his visit to Kenya in search of his
roots and identity. Obama is a masterly writer, a weaver of gripping
stories. He was not an exceptional student, but was intelligent, innocent
and intent. People loved him.
I said that history has come to full circle with Obama in the White
House. Especially when American capitalism is biting dust. The collapse
of Wall Street, the end of American financial dominance and the emergence
of other power centers have framed the spectacle of a Black man's ascendance
to power in a white dominated nation, whose economy is equal to the
combined GDP of China, Japan, India and Germany and whose Defense expenditure
is equal to the rest of the world.
Long ago, in 1619, a Dutch Ship brought the first batch of twenty enslaved
Africans to James town, the Virginia Colony of British North America.
Subsequently 500,000 black Africans were transported to America in chains
to work in the plantations of white masters. Nearly 240 years passed
until 13th amendment to the constitution officially ended slavery in
1865. The 15th amendment passed in 1870 ensured right to vote to all
male citizens regardless of color or previous condition of servitude.
It is incredulous to note that it took another fifty years for the lawmakers
to pass an amendment granting voting rights to women.
Hindus believe in Karma. The whites are paying their karmic debt to
the blacks. With the first black president in the white house the blacks
have redeemed their honor and the whites have cleansed their soul and
United States of America has fulfilled its constitutional pledge. All
are winners in the game. All Americans can celebrate Obama's victory.
Such occasions come but rarely in history.
Obama drew huge crowds wherever he went. In Berlin a record crowd of
200,000 people came to hear him speak that he was proud of being a world
citizen. In Iowa, a massive crowd of 100,000 people came to hear him
expound economic policies. It was the same hysterical crowd wherever
he went- in Minnesota, Florida, Virginia and Portland and the democratic
national convention. Obama comes to office as a world leader, loved
and feted by all, as a true world citizen, with African, Asian, Islamic
and Christian backgrounds. A true liberal with Anglo-Saxon education.
Barack Husain Obama comes to office with an unblemished personal history.
The whole world want him to succeed. He inherits a much weakened and
tarnished America. Perhaps he is the right person with a humble background
and black pedigree to represent America as its fortunes decline in a
world of multipolar powers. United States of America owes a trillion
dollars each to China, Japan and the Arab nations. Its combined debt
is ten trillion dollars, 70 percent of GDP. Medicare and social security
indebtedness is a whopping 43 trillion dollars. It imports 70 percent
of oil requirements. Americans stores are flooded with cheap consumer
goods from China and other East Asian countries. Its car industry, the
signature of American mobility, is in shambles.
World may or may not love America with Barack Obama in power, but what
is certain is Uncle Sam will be feared less, with a black man at the
helm of affairs.
Is it the end of Anglo-Saxon Era? The beginning of the end of a success
story that began with the British colonization of India and America?
The Second World War was fought by the British Empire and won by America
and Russia. During the cold war period America witnessed unprecedented
economic growth, supreme military power status and also became the acclaimed
leader of democracies around the world. Soviet power imploded and collapsed
and America was hailed as the sole super power. Some neocon thinkers
even predicted the end of history and the arrival of the last man in
the rational choice maker and the ultimate idea in market democracy.
America was at the zenith of power and prestige when terrorists attacked
and blew up the Twin Towers, the symbol of capitalism and crashed into
Pentagon, the symbol of military might.
Power is shifting to the East, mainly to China. A weakened America under
Obama, both literally and figuratively, may go back to its old style
of self-sufficient inward looking mode. More taxes, more tariffs, more
barriers to international trade [ to keep jobs home], more money for
social welfare; may be more for education, for infrastructure, more
for alternate sources of energy and less for defense.
I am not sure if Obama will go for immediate withdrawal of forces from
Iraq,( though delay will make him look worse than Bush), but he will
certainly continue operations in Afghanistan fighting against an emboldened
Taliban and Al Quaida and continue to deal cautiously with a more belligerent
Pakistan and Iran. If Obama withdraws troops from Iraq in haste, it
will doom Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel and cause a resurgence of Islamic
fundamentalism in the heartland of Arabia. Iran will go for Nukes upsetting
the balance of power in the Middle East. India will face a resurgence
of violence in Kashmir and China will tighten its arm around Taiwan
and let a nuclear North Korea distract japan and South Korea. A weakened
NATO with a humbled America will face an emboldened Russia flush with
petro-money. When the dust is settled in 25 years time, China will be
a prowling lion and America a limping pachyderm. There is possibility
of war in the Middle East, on the Line of control in Kashmir,on Russian
boarders, between Koreas and wide spread clashes in Africa resulting
in famine and epidemics. The UN, which is already weakened by America's
unilateralism, will look on helplessly and China, the most powerful
nation, will keep chewing bamboos (after the leisurely pandas) waiting
to fish in troubled waters.
Anglo-Saxons have lost their enlightenment values and zeal. Their secularist
moral relativism and intellectual post modernism on one side, and the
unique American atavist evangelical anti-science-ism and corrupting
consumerism on the other, has brought the enlightenment experiment of
the last 400 years--human rights, rule of law, markets, democracy, freedom,
equal opportunity, rational choices-- to a grinding halt in the collapse
of globalized financial institutions.
Barack Obama has fought glitteringly to pick up a job that has lost
its glitter. He was riding a wave which denied him the opportunity of
learning swimming and which ironically has drowned all the expert swimmers.
His has to swim back to safety in choppy waters. The angry blacks, the
disgruntled youths, the illegal Hispanic immigrants, the almighty media,
the starry eyed females, the arrogant Hollywood moguls and insecure
silicon valley netizens and the rest of the growling world will ask
for their pound of flesh. They followed the prophet into the Promised
Land.
I pray for Obama,
before they turn into a pack of hungry wolves, may the good Lord give
him a magic wand!