Ice Cold Rivers Of Change Flood Streets Of Washington

Aetius Romulous:
Editors Screed


How different is the world today, a world now so distant from just a day before.

Yes, of course America has reached a historical milestone by electing its first non-white, non obscenely rich old white guy...I suppose one would have to be blind to miss that. If we did, CNN was there to remind us, thank god. And yes, it's a new age for American Political Bipartisanship, something the rest of the world knows as consensus building,or as it is also known in some places, working together. It's a big deal for Americans, the winner of the SuperBowl of American Idols, Entertainment Tonight for the main Stream Media. Brittany Spears in black face.

As the world followed the young and self confident President and First Lady though their ascension - the Ken and Barbie couple that never really sold well all these years now given shelf space as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue - pictures snapped from thousands of digital cameras and cell phones, media cameramen and satellite uplinks all focused closely on the World's most famous smile. Like wallpaper, the millions who crushed the American Capitol for a distant glimpse of Jumbotron history turned their faces towards the podium, stamped their feet and melted together to preserve their excitement in the teeth of inclement weather. The subject of their awe was nothing more than a dark shadow against white marble, a speck in the distance, an illusion. Buried beneath layers of clothing, scarves, mitts and hats of all description, the world was changing in the churning throngs, had changed by their very being there in the cold, did change by the millions who marched that day to Washington as a new generation, a new age of tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

George Bush the younger, Bill Clinton, George the Dad, and Jimmy Carter. My god how old they looked. My god how old they are. Bush Sr. with a cane and Darth Vader in a wheelchair, icons tumbling from luncheons and health update bulletins. Aretha Franklin, majestic and designer hat besotted, the voice of a generation straining against the cold and bitter winter winds of change. The Baby Boom generation is dying across a billion flat screen monitors, right before our eyes. And cheering them on, hastening their exit, handing them their hat and coat (don't let the door hit you on the way out) were all those "huddled masses", all breathing free of a generation that robbed and pillaged like 21st century Vandals, sacking Wall Street and burning their "citty on a hill" to the ground. The bulge in the snake had digested it's host, and barfed out a world destroyed for those who followed. And those who follow couldn't be more happy about it.


History was not made in Washington on January 20th, 2009. It was made around the world as the great, demographic tidal wave born at the end of World War II heaved the beginnings of its last breath, and the smaller, leaner, world connected generation behind it realized - perhaps for the first time - that it is their world now. Like a glacier tears away at the earth as it recedes, the Baby Boomers will claw away at their remaining time while the waters of change rise all around them. It ain't gonna be pretty folks. Now is the time for the next to seize the present, to utilize the strengths of the internet and a new global community to build and organize, to grow and assert. There is a vacuum developing between those that had it all, and those who must clean up the mess. A vortex of change into which the motivated, the dreamers, the talented risk takers of tomorrow must step.

The worlds Financial architecture must be rebuilt. Nationalism must be shelved on the back rows of history. War must be rethought and understood for what it is (Good for absolutely nothin'...say it again, ya'll). The Earth itself must be attended to and injustice, poverty, and inequality now must be examined by a globe of humans with the ability to work together like never before. The default position must now be consensus.

The internet remains an untapped wonder, and must be freed from all regulation and those who would harness its power only for cash. Print media is dying, it has yet to be replaced. TV has become the idiot box its promise always held out, and radio....what is radio anyway? Information is knowledge, and knowledge is power. By that standard alone, the coming generation will be the most powerful the earth has ever experienced.

No more "us or them". No more "I", but Wii. Text is the language of the future. A language that just won't work on a cell phone text screen or chat board simply won't get it done anymore. Text is international, brkng dwn wals arnd the wrld :). Barack Obama (we are confidentially told by Wolf Blitzer) is struggling to give up his Crackberry as he joins an analog White House in a digital world.

Obama is indeed the right man, in the right place, at the right time. To him will fall the task of shepherding America from its craggy hillock down into the valley of the shadow of everybody else. It will be the toughest job in history, saving new Rome from the fate of the old. Providing a soft landing for a people now unshod of any manifest destiny, overnight and on a cold, winter January. A new Caesar, a Barbarian one of different birth and heritage, has come from the darkness of obscurity, without noble birth or heritage, to seize the reins of empire and rein in its profligate ways before history deals it a mortal blow. Embracing change, consensus, and co operative leadership, Obama has the opportunity to herald the age of the next, and carry the standard for a generation that can simply backspace the old text.

Failing that, he risks becoming nothing more than a dark shadow on a pedestal deep in a Washington hallway, a historical curiosity, a shiny marker on the sunny, breezy, corpse littered slopes of decline and fall.