I Pity You....PUMAs and Rethugs Alike

I sit here on a sunny Saturday morning in Tulsa, OK, knowing that out in the blogosphere there are those who will not join me in celebrating the first president of color to be duly elected in the entire history of our country. Those who will not be celebrating fall into three basic camps: 1) unrepentant Republicans who will likely go to their grave with their McCain/Palin stickers proudly adhered on the back of their gas-guzzling SUVs; 2) ignorant racists and religious zealots who will never accept that an African-American should lead a "Christian" nation; and 3) and this is the group that troubles me the most, those women (and they are mostly, though not entirely, women) who have not let go of the fact that Hillary Clinton was beaten fair and square, and though we will never know for sure, but I maintain that there is a much greater chance that we would be swearing in a President McCain had Hillary gotten the nomination. As I said, we will never know because fortunately that scenario was never tested, but we do know that Barack Obama could and did in fact carry the day on November 4, 2008 and will be sworn in as our 44th President of the United States. That fact seems to be very difficult for those Hillary supporters to accept. Harder still for them to celebrate, I wish that they would have to endure some consequence for their lack of support, their lack of faith in an articulate, intellectual African-American, but that is both a beauty and a disappointment of Democracy. We sink or swim together. We all bore the brunt of the horrible Bush/Cheney years and we all will benefit from the Obama/Biden administration regardless of our vote, our work on behalf of a candidate, or our lack of enthusiasm for the ultimate victor.

Just as a large portion of all of our taxes went to support a war in Iraq that many of us never supported, so too will a portion of all of our taxes go to support the positive programs that President Obama will put into place. It seems fundamentally unfair that I must support with my tax dollars the horrible military-industrial complex that ravaged Iraq and the Gaza strip, and likewise it seems unjust that those who did not support Barack Obama's candidacy will benefit from his programs, but as I said, such is the nature of Democracy.