NOSTALGIA, UTOPIA & OBAMA!

SUNNY THOMAS

Elections are mostly about mood swings. Mitt Romney tried his best to swing the mood of America by his money power, making the 2012 Presidential election the costliest in history. He tried working on racial prejudice and even religious prejudice and proved how vulnerable are democracies to prejudices! Prejudices work not only in America but elsewhere in the absence of a strong leader.   

`He is an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, and what’s more, he is a Muslim’ – the term almost synonymous with a traitor after 9/11. Some evangelists were working overtime with all their missionary zeal to defeat the demon called Obama! 

Unfortunately, the White man’s prejudice ruled supreme, turning it into a racial contest. But the women of America, who proved wiser when it comes to voting, stonewalled the democracy, not to let it be subverted by prejudice.  It is often the nameless, faceless, powerless millions who tilt the balance of power and create history.  

The happiest because of an Obama win are the poorest of the poor who do not have to subsidise the richest of the rich who want to discontinue the health benefits of the poor. So many of the poor Americans will be driven to despair if the health benefits are snatched from them, which Romney would have done to let the rich enjoy their opulent living on the empty stomachs of the poor.  

  

In the last 60 years, America has changed so drastically that the political and social landscape that once existed is beyond recognition today. In the conservative 1950s, a few political families ruled the country and it was oligarchy unchallenged in democratic garb. Today high-technology driven America of Silicon Valley, Microsoft and Apple has redefined the nation, talent-scouting Chinese, Indian, Hispanic immigrants in their thousands. Add to that the educated Blacks coming out of their ghettos to claim their pride of place.

       

 The Republicans are a bunch of conservatives who live in the nostalgia of the 50’s and want very much to turn the clock back, jettisoning illegal immigrants like Obama! The Democrats, in contrast, offer a Utopia of the Great American Dream. It’s much like the India scenario where Congress and BJP offer Utopia and Nostalgia respectively. But it’s the narrative that matters or how effective is your story-telling. 

As for the American republic, nothing much is going to change because of an Obama victory. The Republican-dominated House of Representatives will block with a vengeance any social benefits that the Administration will be planning. 

The America President’s free domain, constitutionally, is in the foreign policy – to decide how many more civilians should be killed by US drones and when to call the American troops home. Most Presidents tend to be aggressive because Arab countries and Afghanistan are their only theatre of action (Arabs have oil and Afghanistan is strategic). A peacenik President is often criticized as a weak President, and a globe-trotting President, as a talking shop President.   

   

 Armageddon could be only months away if Israel plans an adventurous strike on Iran’s nuclear installations! Then it could be third world war, fulfiling Einstein’s prophecy: ``I do not know what the third world war will be fought with, but the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones.’’

Obama saved capitalism with history’s greatest bail-out, he saved American honour by Osama bin Laden’s head; and now he could banish American unemployment to a great degree. In the campaign, America saw his determination, strategy, intelligence, communicative skill and team building in defeating American prejudice, which could have cost his job. 

Three cheers to President Obama, and good luck on his second term!