What's Puzzling You is the Nature of My Game...

Barack Obama has been elected 44th President of the United States. I laid out some of my earlier disappointments here, after Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination in June. Tonight, with the Democratic victory, Americans can rightly celebrate this historic milestone. Obama has achieved a phenomenal success, and it's not without the indomitable measure of his ambition and perseverance in pursuit of a dream.

Yet, the President-Elect is in many ways the least known candidate in the history of American presidential elections. The American public - simply exhuasted after eight years of President George W. Bush and his policies - has put caution to the wind and invested amorphous hopes of change and a better future in a man who has spent less than four years in the U.S. Senate, with a good two of those years spent campaigning for the very office to which he can now claim a popular mandate.

We do not know all that we can about Barack Obama. It's not for a lack of trying. Millions of bytes of digital space, and tens of thousands of dead trees, have been utilized to tell this man's story - over these last couple of years - of reaching the pinnacle of success and power in the American mainstream.

Yet, for all of this, mystery shadows our historic moment. A darkness of ignorance envelopes this candidate, his campaign, and his victory. I'm not fully in accord with Stanley Kurtz, the scholar who has done more than anyone to unearth the revelations of Obama's radicalism, when he says that Obama's been revealed for who he is:

Obama is clever and pragmatic, it’s true. But his pragmatism is deployed on behalf of radical goals. Obama’s heart is, and will remain, with the Far Left. Yet he will surely be cautious about grasping for more, at any given moment, than the political traffic will bear. That should not be mistaken for genuine moderation. It will merely be the beginning stages of a habitually incremental radicalism. In his heart and soul, Barack Obama was and remains a radical-stealthy, organizationally sophisticated, and — when necessary — tactically ruthless. The real Obama — the man beyond the feel-good symbol — is no mystery. He’s there for anyone willing to look. Sad to say, few are.

No, I differ: As we saw this last week - with the release of the audiotape of Obama's comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he indicated he'd "bankrupt" coal companies that refused to line up in lock-step with liberal-Democratic cap-and-trade environmental policies - much more will come out on Obama's oppositional, dramatically unconventional past. No, there's still much to be learned about this man, the man from Chicago, by way of Harvard and Honolulu, who more than any other political aspirant in our great national experiment, has slid under the radar of critical examination and everyday skepticism.

As readers know, I find a lot of comfort in music, in my considerable personal love of rock-and-roll. I'm sure I could find some classic tunes that might do justice to the moment, something, perhaps, like Bill Clinton's inauguration, when Fleetwood Mac performed "Don't Stop (Thinking 'bout Tomorrow)."

But what I've returned to is, in fact, Barack Obama's favorite band, the Rolling Stones, but not, perhaps, his favorite song, "Sympathy for the Devil," in the video above, with lyrics here (and John Lennon at 4:45 minutes, "Imagine!"):

If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Yes, that's right ... if you meet him, look out, give him some sympathy. Bow down low, "The One" is here, and you must pay due penitence for the sins of your fathers, your white fathers. If not, he'll lay your soul to waste with the phenomenal power of the American state - a state structure now to be captured - more heavily than ever before - like nothing James Madison envisioned - by the largest radical left-wing interest group contingent in U.S. history.

Oh sure, Obama will govern from the center: He'll have to, lest he risk a violent conservative reaction. But the tide has turned for this moment, and traditionalists just better hold on tight. This next four years will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Lyndon Johnson did not have the nihilist netroots blogosphere to harass his administration into conformity; and Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats weren't delivered to the progressive hordes who seek to break bread with our mortal enemies. No, things are different today. Meet the new boss.

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.
My masthead is now black in mourning for the missed opportunity of victory in John McCain's moral right and history. This change is permanent, at least as far as my current state of mind dictates. The Obama Soviet "Yes, We Can" widget, above right, is temporary, and will likely come down upon the resumption of regular posts. I don't know when that will be, however. I may take just a day off from blogging, or a month or two. But rest assured, dear readers, American Power will be back, stronger than ever, to pick up the flame of moral clarity and to enjoin the ideological battle that stands before us.

As always, I'll visit and comment at the blogs of all those who visit here.

The continuity of American democracy was confirmed today. Whether the results portend a long-term realignment of party coaltions and moral priorities remains to be seen. In any case, as John McCain would say: Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!

Despair not, for the present concatentation of forces is temporary ... I guarantee it.