The final showdown between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama is looming. Although much has happened in the world that has somewhat deflected the world's attention from the confrontation between the elephant and the ass, still, the outcome of this election is crucial for all of us.
Voting for the President of the US could easily be extended to us Europeans if not the whole world. So influential is the post that, as we have seen, the present incumbent has dragged both his own country and the rest of us to the brink of bankruptcy. George W. Bush may not have been directly responsible for the crash. However, when one stops to think about it one may well ask who is financing the trillions of dollars that are required to finance his wars, epics that have now passed their seventh year without rendering anything back to all those hopefuls who blithely marched into Afghanistan and Iraq thinking that the contracts for reconstruction would more than pay back the initial outlay.
A sum of $700 billion is a small price to pay to keep the financial wheels turning. Consequently, the US will remain in Iraq sitting on those damned oil wells till the money runs out again.
The Bush legislature has been a tragic failure in more ways than one. Anyone, American citizen or not, with an iota of common sense knows that the Bush foreign policies are no more than fools' zanies. What is happening now is merely a long drawn-out face-saving exercise; a farce to be maintained by Mr McCain should he be elected along with that fearsome Amazon from Alaska chosen to woo Mittel-America with her homegrown wisdom that is better suited to the barnyard than the Oval Office.
America has also thrown up the unlikeliest candidate one could ever imagine in a month of Sundays in the person of Mr Obama. You all know enough about the man now for me not to waste time on his CV. The man is charismatic and, as far as the world is concerned, his unusual parentage and origins, sure as bagels are bagels, place him in the unique position to affect a truce if not a reconciliation with the Islamic World.
Since 2001 Islam is determined to eradicate what it perceives to be a decadent, godless, western society that, having lost its moorings, is blissfully floating in a sea of hedonistic intellectualism. For the first time in world history, European civilisation as we know it has thrown off the shackles that hitherto bound it to ideologies that were no more made by God than Crash Crunch chocolates.
The EU, much to the chagrin of those who wish to turn the clock back, has steadfastly refused to insert any reference to religion, Christian or otherwise in both its defunct Constitution and its doomed stand in, The Treaty of Lisbon, which, already in its second or third stage, will inevitably be thrown out again; but that is another story.
This is precisely why Islam cannot understand us and why the rest of the world will not be able to stomach the idea of yet another American President being determined by the Bible Belt.
I subscribed to the Barack Obama official site and now receive daily e-mails from the man himself! Wow! The last one read as follows:
"Kenneth (the Presidential candidate knows me!), I just finished the last debate before the election. Now the outcome of this campaign is up to you. I need your help to get our message out - and to get out the vote. (So I am inserting this for all Malta to know) I wouldn't ask for your support if this campaign didn't urgently need it. The most dangerous thing you can do right now is nothing. Your support and hard work are exactly what we need between now and election day. While he didn't mention the middle class, John McCain chose to repeat the false, negative attacks that make up 100 per cent of his advertising these days. The truth is that his choices say more about his campaign than they do about me. But John McCain and his allies are not going to stop fighting - or attacking - until the very end. We're doing this a different way. Tonight I talked about the real problems ordinary people face during this economic crisis and concrete ways that I will create jobs, cut health care costs, build a new energy policy and get our economy moving. But time is running out. Our strength and our success in these last 20 days depend on you: Thank you for all you do, Barack (or as it's translated, The Blessing)."
He almost sounds like Joseph Muscat, doesn't he? Has America, and the world too, received a blessing? I wonder. Not much sugu, as we Maltese say, in the above missive, however. Isn't the prospect of more of the same for another Presidential term too dire to contemplate? God Bless America for, if He won't, nobody else will.
kzt@onvol.net