Are We Ready for a New Day?

In spite of all the blog problems that I have been experiencing since the weekend, I have still been keeping up with the political happenings and in many ways they have been far more depressing than my blog’s crash – I could fix that.

The bright spot for me over the weekend was Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama. I had wondered if he would finally speak out because I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t been upset by the growing list of absurd, insidious rumors and other outrageous actions of his party during this campaign. And he was upset, but according to an Op-Ed column by Maureen Dowd today, what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out was when he ran across a picture in the New Yorker several weeks ago. It was of a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20 year old soldier who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were his name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards – the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and a crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.

According to Dowd, Powell told her that he stared at the picture for an hour. He said, “Who could debate that this kid lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies was not a fine American?”

In a gratifying moment Dowd calls a “have you no sense of decency, Sir and Madam?” moment, Colin Powell went on “Meet the Press” and talked about Khan and the unseemly ways John McCain and Palin have been polarizing this country to try to get elected. It was for her (and me) a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly innuendo.

Well, Obama isn’t Muslim, he’s a Christian and always has been. But as Powell said … “the really right answer is, what if he was? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s NO. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”

We all are descendants of people of all races who came to this country with the dream of a better life. So, who decided, and when, that some of “us Americans” have the right to run for president and others do not, regardless of their qualifications? It is the narrow-minded, the bigots, the Rush Limbaughs, the McCain and Palins, the Michele Bachmanns, the Republicans who fear losing this election, that believe this and continue to try to stir up hatred and anger against anyone with a different name, a different color of skin, a different religion, a different view of the world. Maybe what we need these days is a different view of the world, a world that gets smaller everyday; a world where there is no place for prejudice, not if we are to survive – not just in this country, but in the world itself.

We have the opportunity to take that giant step towards setting an example, again, not just for our country, but for the rest of the world. A world that is watching to see if we really are all that we would have them believe. That opportunity is ours now. We can make it happen. The question is – are WE ready for that new day?