I heard several commentators expressing their awe and feelings of transcendence they are experiencing now. The quasi-religious expressions and emotions felt have been striking. I myself do not feel this–even the sense of the historical has of yet escaped me. I thought it might be that I believe this should have happened years ago–that the time is well-nigh for a black person be elected to higher office be a simple reality, unastounding but nonetheless just and wonderful for that.

I do believe in the hope this man’s words and the symbolism evoke. But I am unmoved by the religious iconography, I think, since there is little that can or should approximate to the immensity of the inifnite in this world’s flux. I hope no one hears pessimism or sarcasm in these words. Irony-well that is a cleansing mood, as Kierkegaard argued. The irony is tempered at its harder edges by the words and hollow epithets I have had to endure from Republican and conservative pundits on the mass media. While countries lie in ruins, lives decimated and hundreds of thousands of dead crying from death’s maw, there is little that can assuage my feelings that there should be an avenging angel flying overhead somewhere. Obama’s words of peace and hope can certainly take away the brine of these tearful thoughts, yet one must surely hope for the knell of justice to be rung for these unjustly killed.

Some say that this election shows how good and right Americans are. I sit back and wonder whether this side of light can ever be balanced against the darkness visited on others by the past eight years when 95 percent of these good and right people believed that their princes and principalities acted in the right.