As We End 2008: One Way America is Better than the Rest 12/31/08

Damn, it's been a while since I've written an article... ANWYAY

2008 was a year of firsts. Well, A first: the first black President (and the first Catholic VICE President. Ooh! Shiny!)

Not only that, we had the second female Vice Presidential candidate and the first woman to be considered on the Republican ticket (I'm pretty sure after the second try, a woman will NEVER be nominated for Vice President... who knows? Maybe 3 times' a charm?)

Still, between a black man winning 53% of the vote in 2008 and an openly racist candidate winning 13% of the popular vote only 40 years ago, I'd say that we've come along way. But like Hitler and the horror of the Weimar Republic, Obama is more of a sign of the times than a true factor in and of himself. At least in this respect. The racial one that is.

Obviously, racism still exists in America. But obviously not enough to keep a black man from the largest position in the American government.

Although recently, we're reminded of racism on the other side of the planet: the Middle East.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nothing new. It's been happening since at least 6,500 B.C. So I'd say by now, we're pretty used to it. I mean, I logged on to my Yahoo! mail address and saw the headline "Palestinian Rocket Accidentally Kills 2 Children." Big surprise. Honestly, I didn't even bother to read the article.

The next day, turns out the Palestinians blame the Israelis. Following just headlines and not even reading articles, it turns out the Israelis sent troops to the Gaza border to prepare for a Hamas attack. Leaders are considering sending "peace-keeping" forces to Gaza, just in case Israeli forces enter the useless strip of land.

And this is where America kicks every other country's ass. Race relations.

During the Cold War, America obviously had a big hand over the USSR which sent political enemies to work camps in Siberia. In several instances, sending American nationals to the gulags. Bringing this up usually heralded the response, "Yes... and you lynch Negroes."

The appropriate American response would be, "Touche."

Of course, 40 years later and we've changed a lot. But have the Russians? As far as I'm concerned, the so called "collapse" of the Soviet Union was in name only. Russia's no more Communist than Japan. Yet, they still have an extremely low freedom rating.

How does this relate to the Middle East? Well, I can understand race relations in America. I mean, Blacks and White's aren't the same race. Differences usually are inherently conflictual. But Arabs and Jews are the SAME RACE. They're BOTH SEMETIC. So you can't really say Arabs are Anti-Semetic. They'd be hating themselves.

Honestly, it's a good thing the Arabs have the Jews to hate. Otherwise they'd all hate each other. Why do the Egyptians, Lebanese, Jordanians, and Saudis want to dump the Palestinians in Palestine/Israel? Because it's a shitty piece of land and they don't want them on theirs.

If it wasn't for the creation of Israel, then it would STILL be a shitty piece of land. The Israelis came in and used their crazy horticulture science and made it a prosperous nation. If the Palestinians were in control, then it would be another nameless Middle-Eastern nation we easily forget among the coups and civil wars.

Think of America without the whites. Sure, we did horrible things to the Indians, but we also developed the land into an incredibly prosperous nation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify the genocide of Native Americans any more than I'm trying to justify the Israeli concentration of Palestinians onto even shittier pieces of land. But still, Natives and Whites have learned to get along? In a modern world where communication is instant, technology is growing at an exponential rate, and we have enough nuclear energy to destroy solar systems, can't we all just get the fuck along?

I'd like to think that the 21st Century would have that sort of a ring of hope to it. Maybe someday we might.

But judging how 2009 is starting off... not this year.

12/31/08