Hyperborea

Unlike the hip-hop group Public Enemy who said, “Don’t Believe the Hype”, Americans - and much of the world for that matter - bent over backwards when it came to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Before you start thinking this is going to be an anti-Obama / pro-Trump piece, relax; I voted for Gary Johnson. And no, I didn’t give the election to Donald Trump by denying Hillary Clinton the election. I’m from Cuyahoga County (Cleveland, OH), and this county went Clinton. My vote wouldn’t have changed anything, even if I would have voted for Trump.

What I want to talk about is “hype”.

I recently posted on Twitter: “Now that Obama's time is over, can we all get back to NOT worshipping 1/3 of the government? #reality”.

Actually, even prior to President Obama, there has been an almost obvious worship of the Office of the President. What we forget is that the President is only 1/3 of the government (remember the Legislative and Judicial branches?) and that his/her power is limited.

Because of that worship, the election process has turned from looking for the best person to hold this temp job, to looking for a messiah to deliver us from all our ills. And that, my friends, is our fault.

“If you hadn't elevated the office of POTUS to king/lord/savior of the world, the transition to someone you dislike would be MUCH easier.” - me

President Obama was not a terrible president. Nor was he the best. At most I’d call him mediocre. He went in with the best of intentions, but found out that the Washington establishment was a little too thick in the skull to listen to “reason”. Unfortunately, the American people and even the rest of the world, were looking for Hyperborea and figured he would be the One to lead us to it.

Remember, there was so much hype around President Obama, that the Nobel Committee bestowed on him the Nobel Peace Prize - not for anything he had done, but for the POTENTIAL of what he would do.

And President Obama fed the hype: “...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

It was believed that because of President Obama, a.k.a. “The first black President”:

the racial divide would dissolve, the economy would thrive, and the world would reach an age of peace (a.k.a. “Aquarius”). Instead, though there was a statistical decrease, there was an increase in reports of blacks being shot by white police officers;

the unemployment rate was the lowest it’s been since before the recession - if you, like the media and the White House, discount the large number of individuals either working at jobs paying far less than before the recession, or are no longer eligible to receive unemployment and therefore no longer counted;

and the American military was fighting more war fronts than the peak of the Bush/Cheney war machine years.

I wonder if the Nobel Committee wants their money back.

And now? We have Donald Trump. We don’t need the media to hype him; he is doing that plenty well on his own. Will he be a good President? For the sake of the country, I hope so. At worst, I can only hope he is also mediocre.

I think it would be best if we and the Office of the President followed the words of Christina Aguilera: "I don't want to believe my own hype."

©Emittravel 2017