[El
Tiempo, Colombia]
El Tiempo, Colombia
We Owe Lady Democracy
for Obama - and Bush
"We owe Lady Democracy for
Obama, but also for the ineffable George W. Bush. The democracy that elected
him and kept him - nepotistic, corrupt, warmongering, human rights violating,
and incapable of controlling its own economic system - is the same one that
today gives us Obama."
By Daniel Samper Pizano
Translated By Liz Essary
January 21, 2009
Colombia
- El Tiempo - Original Article (Spanish)
These days, it is repeated
and stressed that Barack Hussein Obama's rise to power is the fruit of a model
democracy. I think it's the fruit of literature. What's more: Bad literature. The
story of the new president of the United States could have been conceived only
by a cruel novelist with an excessive imagination and without any
rational sense of reality -and possibly drugged.
Read it over and you'll see: A
White girl from Kansas gets married, already pregnant by a Black man from Kenya;
they have a boy and give him his father's name - which has a Muslim flavor; soon later
they separate; she gets a new husband - this time, Indonesian - and they set up
house in Jakarta; little Obama turns out to be a bad student but a good athlete,
so his mother sends him to Hawaii to stay with his White grandparents; and she
divorces again. Finished high school,
the young man ends up in Los Angeles, where, among other things, he picks up
vices of the nose and mouth and discovers his social environment. From then on,
his passion is ethnic work; he wins scholarships to excellent White American
universities; he becomes the best student at Harvard Law and works in politics
until the day the people choose this unlikely character with family and
influences in Africa, Asia, and the United States as their president.
This kind of surprise isn't
the sort of gift we derive from democracy, but rather, from literature. As far
as his career, the story reads more like a best seller, not an actual
possibility. But it is real, and we should enjoy it, welcome it, and trust that
the new president will live up to our hopes; and that his enemies - who are
many and very powerful - won't manage to take what has been born of such
encouraging prospects and convert it to frustration and failure.
'THE CONQUEST OF THE WHITE
HOUSE'
[Hoje Macau,
Macau]
But none of this means that this
historic episode constitutes proof of a model democracy. I am a committed
democrat and admire a great many things about United States society, but if we
marvel at the fact that a Black man will govern it, it's because during the
last two centuries, this same democracy has been a machine of racial
discrimination and the enthronement of profit above all other values. We owe Lady
Democracy for Obama, but also for the ineffable George W. Bush. The democracy
that elected him and kept him - nepotistic, corrupt, warmongering, human rights
violating, and incapable of controlling its own economic system - is the same one
that today gives us Obama.
Transported to Germany, it
was she [Lady Democracy] who, 75 years ago - on August 3rd 1934 - elected Hitler
as the all-powerful chancellor, 38 million free voters to 4 million. And it is
she who, in her Colombian incarnation, is forging an authoritarian and
oligarchic regime in which checks [on government] are more and more relaxed and
of indefinite duration, corruption is shocking, politics is degrading, and the law
is disregarded.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
So we should curb our
enthusiasm. Model democracy doesn't exist. Democracy itself doesn't even exist;
only remedial attempts. It is something we must build every day, brick by
brick, cleanse it of impurities, and strengthen it with the application of law
and the defense of the values of coexistence, liberty and equality. And the
only way to coherently achieve this is through incorruptible democratic
procedures.
May the democracy of the
beautiful journey of Barack Hussein Obama have a happy ending and mark new
paths.
PRESIDENT URIBE WEARS HIS PRESIDENTIAL
MEDAL OF FREEDOM; HOLDS PHOTO
OF BUSH
[El Tiempo, Colombia]
cambalache@mail.ddnet.es
CLICK HERE FOR SPANISH
VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US January 23, 2:45pm]
