Oh, well, perhaps life will go on

I went to Birmingham today with a friend to visit the Birminham Museum of Art. It's magnificent. It contains many not-so-great works by great artists, but it's good to see those works anyway. For example, there is a Mary Cassatt (who doesn't like Mary Cassatt?), but it lacks the charm of all other Mary Cassatt paintings I have seen. There were some Rembrandt sketches; there is a Monet, but a pretty mediocre one; Gilbert Stuart, Rembrandt Peale, Benjamin West, Childe Hassam, Camille Pisarro, a Courbet, a Millet, a Corot, Dorothea Lange, Andy Warhol, N.C. Wyeth, and many others are represented. It was a nice surprise.

And one of my favorite paintings, Albert Bierstadt's Looking Down Yosemite Valley, was there. Ah, that was a joy. That luminism!

My friend is a borderline conspiracy theorist. She's one step away from saying Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. She's taking some kind of Bible prophecy class and insists on seeing Bible prophecy in everything. Me, I'm not even committed to the idea of a rapture. Maybe, maybe not. That's God's business. I just know Christ will come back. I sincerely doubt B.H.O. has anything to do with it (although it's tempting to think so. A colleague admitted to asking her husband if Obama was the Anti-Christ. "He's too stupid to be the anti-Christ," her husband replied. I dare say yes. The Anti-Christ would not make a smart remark about Nancy Reagan having seances in the White House. How incredibly snarky, disrespectful, and rude--the three words I would use to describe the man we have to call president-elect.)

Oh, well, as the title suggest, life goes on. I can still enjoy the Bierstadt; I can still blog; my house is almost paid for; I have a job I can work at til I'm dead; my son will be able to get out of college debt-free, thanks to our frugality; we have no other debt; our credit score is out the roof; God's blessings pour down on us. But I am frightfully angry at the abject stupidity of the American people for electing Obama. Not because liberals don't have a right to vote for someone who supports their views--I share some of those, specifically on the environment (but not on social ethics and not the economy, which I think we are overreacting to). I'm mad as h--- because millions of people voted for him unthinkingly, with no knowledge of his positions, only because of his race, only so they could say they voted for him, only because the economy is bad. Because he was elected by whim and not by principles. Like so many presidents before him.

That being said, I am happy for those older African-American folks who truly have suffered from racism in this country, who have paid the price, who have lived to see a person of their race awarded the prize. (Although I am puzzled why Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell did not receive the same adulation for achieving those high offices--could it be only about politics after all?)

God help us. We need it.

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