The Importance of Obama's Election

Martin Luther King, Jr. went to the mountain top and looked over into the Promised Land. Last Tuesday, Barack Obama was elected to be our Joshua. Someone to restore hope in the democratic ideals of America and lead us into uncharted territory.
The historical nature of the election reveals a number of things about the state of our being as a society. First, Obama is truly a man of the people. Half black, half immigrant...he was raised on the fundamental American value that you can be anything if you work hard enough. Barack Obama takes away everyone's excuse to fail.
Cynics had come to believe that only the richest Americans, or those who had their support, could seek, much less win the highest office. Obama showed us how to use technology to start a grassroots movement that could raise more money than any major party fundraising machine ever imagined.
Naysayers and cynics are the losers in this election. The people have shown us that democracy does work. We have seen the failure of fear and division. Perhaps now we can see government used to solve America's problems. The major parties will have to give up campaigning on the issues and begin implementing the solutions if they want to win re-election.
We seem to understand now that people of the world are more alike than the small differences that appear to divide us. The survival of the planet is as important to Europe, Asia and Africa as it is to us.
Hopefully,we are about to learn that we are not what we buy. "Go shopping" isn't the answer to our economic problems. We are going to be asked to serve and to sacrifice and Americans are going to be good at both.
We let the lights go out in the shining city on the hill for eight years. Tuesday night in Grant Park there were no fireworks, but the lights came back on in the eyes of the people in the park and were bright enough to be seen around the world.
Barack Obama already has the means in place to communicate directly with the American people at Change.gov. We don't have to have our information filtered through the bias of a cable news outlet. He will open the doors and welcome Americans into the Oval Office and the decision making process. Obama won't be the decider, he will be the implementer.
The United States can only have one president at a time, and George W. Bush is the man until January 20. But Obama is running a transition that appears to be as well thought out and hardworking as his campaign. We have a chance America. We have been pulled back from the brink of self-destruction. I am so thankful and relieved to know that all appearances to the contrary, we are not sheep. We will not be deceived into an authoritarian state. We still believe in our country's core values and we still hope for the future.