Why is This Day Different?

It's the morning after the great day and now the next four years begins. The Great PD and family had no traffic at all driving home from DC. How could that be? The Great BZWZ watched up until the poem and then missed Pastor Lowery. A big mistake. PD kept phoning Mummy P. from the Mall with updates. She was in Stiletto around her TV screen too and Plottie suspects most of you were too.

Why is this day different than all other days? It isn't, unless we make it so.

There may be more color in our official world now, but nothing else has changed all that much...until we change it. No need to complain any more about Bush or Cheney, or Bush's war, or that evil Rumsfeld, or that toady Condoleeza or that heinous Gonzalez. We wanted this and now we've got it. What are we going to do about it?

Which of perhaps a dozen or more major, intractable tasks, will Barack Obama choose to tackle? If we want to grant him advance membership in the same club with Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or the biblical prophets, how will we help him? Which issue will The Great Plotnik choose to work for, to help push a solution forward?

Here are Plot's three choices: First off, we've got to stop the financial bleeding, which may not be possible except over time. We got fat and now we will lose some...if not all...of the excess. We need to take care of ourselves, our homes, our kids, our own worlds, and then stick it out. Do what you have to do.

Next: deal with Israel. Refuse to spend a penny for Gaza's rebuilding. Let Israel pay for it. They broke it, they can fix it. When they can't, or won't, we step in with huge strings attached. Refuse to give them one more dollar or plane or bullet unless they are attacked. Tell them we say it is time for peace, or they can go talk to their good friends in...oh, wait, they don't have any other friends. Tell the Palestinians the same thing. The world doesn't like them either. FIX THIS ISSUE. We alone can make them both wake up and smell the felafel.

And last, for Obama: revamp Health Care. Provide coverage for every American. Period. Choose your method. Our current system is destroying our economy and strapping all our other resources. How do you pay for it? Start by taking the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We are wasting our time there, they hate us and will continue to hate us, until we deal with Israel and Palestine. And maybe even after that too. Use our own money to help our own people.

This is what Plotnik thinks. He may have lived too long in Saint Plotniko. What do you think?

Remember that time passes, and no matter how saintly the prophets are, their successors never are. If Barack Obama can speak to both Americas, the America of confidence and the America of despair, he will have to bring the country along with him. Otherwise, after he's gone, the old hatreds will surface and we will be right back where we've been all along, dealing with the problems we might have tackled but chose not to. We'll be Serbs fighting Croats. Protestants fighting Catholics. Blacks fighting whites. Women distrusting men. Jews fighting...everybody.

Why is this day different than all other days? Because we're looking through the desert and today we can see the river. Bring the zinfandel and let's get moving.