BEYOND THE OPTICS

MAYBE IT WAS JUST A DREAM...

Or maybe it was just a thought about one of the people I've admired most in my lifetime, whose most famous words were, even after enduring so much hatred and scorn and inhumane injustice:

"I have a dream."

And despite his assassination, Martin Luther King's dream is coming to fruition, at least in one very important sense.

A black man who I also admire greatly, Barack Obama, is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States.


And as overjoyed as I am about that -- and I'm not saying he's a clone of King -- it gives me great hope for the world because the next leader of the United States is, essentially, going to be the leader of our planet from 2008-2012 or 2016 or so.




He or she will have much work to do if they want to UNDO the damage wrought by a president in Dubya whose Republican administration has entirely screwed up the world and left America as little more than a plasticized, ostracized shell of its former self.




Anyway, back to my dream or whatever it is, a fearful image I have about this 2008 presidential race. I saw on TV a documentary about Martin Luther King. And now we've got a black candidate in Obama.




And he's going up against a white woman in Hillary Clinton.




Black man. White woman. President of the United States. Contemplate that. I blogged about this possibility several months ago. And here it is, pardon the pun, in black and white.

Yes, I'm suspending, for the moment, the absurd possibility that the Republicans can actually win again with John McCain or Mitt Romney or Guigliani or wotshisname.




(I consider McCain the only real person -- I mean REAL -- among the bunch of donkeys. Or is that white elephants?).




The Americans will have their say in November. I don't get a vote.




And who can say that, despite everything, or maybe to spite the idea of either a black man or a white woman, the U.S. of A. won't vote in another right-wing president because they want to keep their sons coming home in body bags?




But here's my thought, or concern.




Obama or Clinton, but especially Obama, would be a jolt to American history and, shall we call it, in my estimation, an unacceptable shock to American elite sensibilities, form, practice and prejudices.




The greatest country in the world ruled by a black?




Hell, there's STILL Ku-Klux Klan meetings and demonstrations going on, y'all, permitted and protected by police, especially in the Deep South. Aren't there?




The greatest country in the world ruled by a woman?




C'mon, they can't even golf properly because they've got these mounds of flesh on their chests that get in the way, as one golf announcer once proclaimed.




They should be washing dishes and preparing supper and having babies.




A black man as president, espousing everything corporate America and the Military Establishment doesn't want to hear?




Such as getting out of Iraq and coming up with something resembling universal health-care?




Nah. Let's stop that.




And here, in the past, is how that very end has been achieved to end the aspirations that would make America great...and which would make the world a better place, from my point of view.

I'm almost fearful of saying it.

But the thoughts I've had, in associating all the past with the current reality of a black man and a white woman contending for the U.S. election, have got me thinking about Abraham, Martin and John (and Robert).

I sure hope it doesn't happen.