So...when CAN the Red Man get ahead, man?

I realise that people who read 'A Word on Failure' are not on the cutting edge of modern society. I know this because you read 'A Word on Failure', when all the cool kids are spending their precious net-reading time dissecting The Standard, The Beastly Huffington, or looking up funny clips on Youtube. I mean, Paul and I haven't even worked out how to upload photos yet! So, I could forgive you, long-suffering readers of an inferior blog, if you had been SO out of touch with society, that you hadn't caught up with the news recently. If you'd missed for example, that a black guy is now President of the United States of America.

In a comically bad life decision, considering I had work and class the next day, I stayed awake the whole night waiting for the Obama Inauguration speech. (In NZ, we're 18 hours behind Barackington DC, so midday there was 6am there). I even bought pretzels and Budweiser. So, by the time the speech ACTUALLY arrived (after hours and hours of mindless drivel, as the pundocracy tried to stretch coverage of the President-Elect's front-door out for a few hours), I had hyped it up to such an unreasonable extent I expected the poetry within Obama's prose to melt my jaded heart, leading me to sing the praises of YesweCanism from the pews of Baracktholic Church, and immediately apply for a green card.

For four entirely unrelated and downright curmudgeonly reasons, I was dissapointed.

The first was a sense of dissapointment in myself. The reason I ended up tossing my 'McCain 08' badge in the (non-recyclable) trash can was because Obama's whole campaign rhetoric boiled down to this; you couldnt rely on Washington (insert the name of your own country's ineffectual capital here) to tackle the planet-saving tasks of climate change reduction, giving everyone a fair and decent go in life, and mending an economy broken by a philosophy of greed - EVERYONE needed to act together to solve them. Thats why his slogan was 'Yes WE can' and 'WE are the one's WE'VE been waiting for' - NOT 'With my help, your self-destructive behaviour will have no negative harms!'. But when I watched Obama's speech I waited for him to reassure me, give me some lofty rhetoric that would convince me that everything was going to be all right, that the recession wasn't gonna hurt me. I waited for the lofty rhetoric that would bring me to tears. And when it didnt come, when it was replaced with somber prose about the magnitude of the challenges facing the West, and the need for individuals to shoulder a collective burden, I felt cheated. Even though that was what Obama had promised to do the whole time.

My second gripe was with the steady stream of moonbat political pundits that proclaimed throughout the day that this was the 'victory of the civil rights movement'. What a bunch of crap. Blacks still occupy the lowest rungs of the education and health ladders, and are grossly overrepresented and prison and unemployment statistics. Obama (and Condi, and Colin and Tony Dungy) represent deviations from a general statistic, outliers if you will. They are black people that, through dint of their exceptional ability were able to rise to the top and overcome MORE barriers than would have been faced by a white candidate in that same position. To say that Obama's ascent to the presidency is proof that equality now reins in America, and black people can no longer claim their colour as an excuse (thankyou, The Economist, for that little piece of latent racism) is deeply offensive to those who fought so hard for black civil rights. Chris Rock is right, there will be true equality in America when there is a Black president as dumb as George Bush.

H'okay, Gripe number three. This concerns the infuriating tendency of liberal American speechmakers, and Obama in particular to make dovish, cooing noises about an America that honours diversity and a plurality of values AND then the next sentence, to make an impassioned appeal to the power of an almighty Christian god to bless America, and bless American exceptionalism. No longer can America have their sunday school cake and eat it. The Obama administration must choose between referencing the Christian God as America's very own saviour and protector, and sticking the middle finger at....errr, any one else in the world whose value system doesnt match America's OR it can prove that it gives a damn about diversity, and the legitimacy of a non Christian belief framework. I know which one I'd prefer.

Finally, and this was something I didnt even notice until a friend pointed it out, but where were the Native Americans in Obama's speech? Even we evoked the metaphor of the first settlers to America (the Pilgrims, duhhh), the Native Americans were conspicuously absent. America's indigenous peoples constantly appear WAY down the list of government priorities, which is a travesty for the advancement of indigineous peoples everywhere. The plight of many Native Americans is truly dire, employment on some reservations hits 77%, drug use is rampant and effective programmes for community renewal are completely non-existent. Worse still, many fundamental cornerstones of the American legal system are wholly inadequate in accounting for the very real, cultural and religious norms of the Native American people. The first Amendment, for example, which forbids the establishment of a state-owned religion, does not cater for the spiritual, community and location-based practices of the Native Americans, only for the individual, scripture-based doctrines of the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity and shit, yo). So, the first amendment has been used to justify the bulldozing of Native American burial sites, and to fire Native American employees who engage in the cultural practice of peyote. And yet, despite these gross abuses of the rights of the first peoples, that are afforded no airtime in one of the most important speeches by a American leader in its history.

Make no mistake, I like Obama, and I desperately want him and his presidency to succeed. But America has been presented with a unique chance for renewal, and a unique chance to look at a comprehensive overhaul of its political culture. To give a fuck about the Native Americans. To realise diversity exists, and its sexy. To realise that America has only taken one step forward on the path to equality, not teleported to the finish line. And to realise that individuals cannot free-ride on other peoples good behaviour, we must all be responsible for bringing er, change we can believe in.

If Obama can do all these things, Im booking a ticket to South Dakota, and carving his face into Mt Rushmore. If he shies away from major change....well, then he's Bill Clinton.

Alex.