Saturday, November 15, 2008

A Failure of Imagination

It's been ten days since the election of our first biracial President, Barack Hussein Obama. As a fait, it is extremely accompli, and people need to get over the fact that the GOP ticket lost.

I went to work three days after Election Day determined not to gloat and fully expecting to have to talk some of my coworkers off the ledge. For supposedly intelligent, mature adults, I encountered quite a bit of - well, I hate to call it stupidity as that's quite harsh.

Most of their talk centered around their perceived 'fact' that Obama would destroy the country or, failing that, drag the country even further down the road to destitution and moral decay. The consensus, after listening to a number of folks, was that all of Obama's campaign promises were impossible or impractical and therefore would never be achieved. One even confidently predicted that Sarah Palin would be elected in a landslide in 2012.

Since 2012 is supposedly the Mayan Great Year where the end of the world is supposed to happen, I'll hold that prediction in abeyance.

I am astounded at the lack of imagination among my coworkers. Isn't it possible that Obama will do a good job? That all of his decisions will be better than George Bush's were? That the economy might rebound and things get better under a Democratic administration?

Time will tell, as it always does, but in the meanwhile I am exhorting people to have a little imagination and try not to be so pessimistic.

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