Not Quite Year Zero - or - Obama's in the buildin'

16 years, 6 months, and what, a week? ago I was on the streets of my small home town with my best friend and wondered, in that untouched - hell, untoughed - way that only a half-educated and half-conditioned and half-cultured boy from the half-sticks can, about the culture and state of his nation as I knew that nearly an entire coast of the coutry was ablaze in riots and across much of the radio dial there were calls that, to put it kindly, emphasized not only a difference of opinion but a difference of being. As I said to that very same friend tonight - it's a machete strike to the breadth of our lives no doubt, but it is a mere wink of things when it comes to the age, the deep knee bend breaths, of the nation. I had actually planned on more vitriol, more Snidely Whiplash, well . . . lashings of things like "Focus on the Family", James Dobson's 16-page nugget of all the fear mongering trip that has come up in the last 20 months of campaigning but I would rather not. I wait for more. This seems too empty, not enough - let us see what comes, we all know my vote.