Black and White and Red and Blue and Black and Blue

When Obama was elected there was a huge sense of accomplishment throughout this country, not because his victory represented some much-needed change in the country's current political and economic climate, but because of the fall of a notable, long-standing racial barrier.

Many talk-show puppets, newspaper and magazine article heralded the election of a black man to the nation's highest office, and frankly, while I understood this sense of national accomplishment -- or simply our ability to, finally, get rid of a stigma on our racial potential as a nation -- my feeling was that the country acted properly by choosing Obama. I wasn't and I'm not a huge proponent of his, but in contrast, McCain was by far the wrong man for the job that Obama faced this past January.

Whether or not his policies will be successful long-term can't be answered now, but frankly, I'm not unhappy that he won the election. For me, the essential truth is that whether he was black or white or blue is irrelevant; I believed and continue to believe he's making far more progress than any concerns I may have vis-a-vis the US-Israel relationship as well as those relating to our long-term military and economic conventions.

In either case, while we may celebrate as a nation the fact that he was our first black President, or that we as a nation, largely speaking, made the right choice, is secondary. Of paramount importance was that the belief -- or hope -- that his election would make great strides towards removing or eliminating racial barriers might be short-lived, as evidenced by this story.

It's only been seven months -- to the day -- of his election, so perhaps we can't expect very much yet. But at the same time, people who have hate in their hearts -- whether for Obama or for other minorities or for anyone unlike them -- will either learn to shed themselves of that hate or they will be consumed by it. The above-linked story, of course, is absolutely repulsive; and what I think the suspects mentioned therein have yet to realize -- and will probably never gain the ability to do so -- is their actions, truly, are an embarrassment to the country and to humans in general.

I hope one day these types of incidents are a thing of the past, but I doubt any of us -- myself, anyone reading this, or our grandchildren -- will be alive to celebrate that day.