Stop Cheering For Obama

Yes, I know it's really nice that Obama's going to be president in a few hours - almost as nice as the fact that it won't be Bush - but I can't help feeling nervous.

After all, the USA is the place where a significant number of voters at the last election believed Obama was a Muslim. It's the place where people are rushing out to buy guns because they worry that Obama will tighten the law to make it harder to get them. It's the place with the largest body of people anywhere outside a Muslim country that believes the Bible is the literal word of God. It's also the country that just trashed the world economy by allowing inept capitalists to go unregulated and unchecked for so many years.

Yes, Obama seems sensible and reasonable, but he's not God and he's not Dictator of America. As the global depression deepens through 2009 and 2010, Obama will be as helpless as all the other world leaders to do much about it.

That's when the crowds that are cheering him today - out of work by then, their savings gone, and their homes repossessed - will most likely turn on him like a pack of dogs and rip out his throat.

I'd rather he was inaugurated without all this razzmatazz and with far, far fewer expectations. Then people might feel gratitude for the good things he does (and I'm sure he'll do as much good as is humanly possible) instead of feeling disappointment and hostility about the things he couldn't do.

Oh yes, and please, America, don't assassinate this one.