meet the new boss

listening now to the bbc call-in show where people all over hte world call in and share their opinions. the topic today is, of course, barack obama, and whether he should solve all the world's problems.

i was with a group of friends, last night, many of whom voted republican, and many of whom voted obama as registered republicans. why were they registered republicans? because they really wanted ron paul to be elected. why choose obama, then, when ron paul lost the nomination?

because once the Small Government candidate was out of the running, it was then a matter of choosing your poison. which kind of big government would you like? do you want the Expand The Military And Executive Powers party, or the Expand Entitlements and Give My Money to the Poor party?

The US has had its fill of the expand the military party. And staring into the maw of another Depression, one that might take the Great out of the Great Depression the same way WWII took the Great out of WWI, we the people figured that "expanding entitlements" sounded an awful lot like "saving us from doom".

Ultimately, though, the next four years will likely see a further expansion of government power: just not the same government powers that saw expansion the last 8 years. With the worldwide outpouring of "thank god it's not bush", I'm guessing we'll see the hugely popular (outside the US) obama push through greater globalization of government. Yeah, real black helicopter stuff, but the other way around: I see obama being invited to Save Our Country all over the world, and a re-expansion of American hegemony coupled with an expansion of internal government powers.

I realized this morning that Obama's first act of president, for me, was to restore my cynicism. It's good to have a Democrat back in the oval office. At least he'll play well on TV.