world issues

A nation built with African slaves inaugurates an African-American President.

A nation driven by culture wars born out of the Vietnam era moves into hope for more pragmatic, if still partisan, politics.

A nation fallen into the darkness of torture, of "collateral damage" of hundreds of thousands of lives, of ends justifying any means returns to an age of striving for the highest of American ideals.

A nation seduced by the fantasies popularized by Ronald Reagan, that markets are God, that government is evil, that global warming is a myth, that liberalism is out to destroy America, a nation almost paralyzed with the shock of the revealed lie of those fantasies -- a long nightmare, really -- returns to a reality-based vision of the world.

A nation coming off of one of the more ugly racist federal elections puts a black man into office.

Barack Obama is a pragmatic progressive whose intellect brings us hope that his leadership can guide the cumbersome bureaucracy and conflicting interests and influences into actions that make sense, based on reason.

It was truly audacious two years ago to believe this could happen. It took a lot of hope and the hard work of millions, and the faith of many more. But here it has happened.

Barack Obama is about to become President.

How unlikely.

How amazing.

The world is astonished. Today America returns to the light.

Watching the round-table on the NewsHour tonight, with Gwen Ifill leading several observers:

Rev. Joseph Lowery, who with Dr. King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; he will deliver the benediction at tomorrow's swearing in; Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a NewsHour alum who was also the first African-American woman to attend the University of Georgia, she's now a special correspondent in Africa for NPR and other news organizations; Ta-Nehisi Coates, contributing editor for the Atlantic and a fellow at the Nation Institute; and Rael Nelson James, a development associate for KIPP DC, a network of high-performing inner-city charter schools in and around Washington, D.C.

... my friend asked me, "If Hillary had won the election, would we have a panel talking like this, about the "transcendental" nature of her election?"

Yes and no. It would be different.

If Hillary were elected, I don't think that the world's reaction would be quite the same. The world has seen a few quite prominent and powerful female leaders. Major nations today are led by female presidents (or similar titles). If America had elected Hillary Clinton, I think the world would be relieved that it wasn't McCain and the Bush era was ending, but I don't think they would be quite so rocked to their core. For all the misogyny in the world, women leaders are not so unknown.

(Stay with me, I'm coming back to Hillary in a moment.)

If you've traveled overseas in the past few years, you might know that, as racist as America has been (and still is), the rest of the world is on balance more racist. "Ethnic cleansing" is a foreign thing, not an American thing. Frankly, much of the world truly believed that America would never ever elect a black president.

And coming out of this darkest era in the modern history of the United States -- Iraq, torture, extraordinary renditions, surveillance, unilateralism -- the contrast of the impending Barack Obama presidency vs. the Bush presidency is pretty shocking. The world is relieved, astounded, hopeful, and I think inspired. We turned from the dark side. And this former slaver nation has elected Barack Obama!

So what about Hillary?

I'll say this: If Hillary had been elected, it would not be such a profound worldwide event, but it would be an earth-shattering change in domestic politics.

America does not have a strong history of powerful female political leaders. It's not just misogyny -- that's too easy. It's also a matter of cultural habit, and blindness.

It took an exceptionally intelligent, graceful, savvy, tenacious Barack Obama to cross the racial barrier. And perhaps it's his bipartisan rhetoric that has made it possible at all.

It will take an even more exceptionally intelligent, graceful, savvy, tenacious woman candidate -- also bipartisan, I think, to win against the prejudgers -- to cross the gender barrier.

Because there is a barrier, no question.

Hillary might have been that person, but I think she truly undermined her own candidacy. Someday a woman will win. And while the world at that moment may just shrug, it will be a transcendent event in America.

(Unless it's Sarah Palin, in which case America is doomed.)

...do you think the nutroots would stop plugging their ears and shouting "nah nah nah nah nah nah nah"?

Oh, probably not. It's that godless science that's the problem, right?

Jon Stewart called it "Iranian Hostage Crisis: The Next Generation" (with the requisite cool cable-news-like graphics), but now Iranian dissidents are saying it really is like old times: The Iranian government planned to take British soldiers hostage.

Abedini told a London press conference that an Iranian Revolutionary
Guard naval garrison had been on alert from the night before the
kidnapping, to prepare for the operation.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, who handles foreign affairs for the council,
said in a statement that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
had ordered the detention of the Britons in the hope of pressuring the
British government over a threat to toughen U.N. sanctions.

"You can see that the clerical regime had in a premeditated act
arrested British sailors in order to win concessions from the
international community and divert attention from its nuclear project,"
Abedini said. "Claims that the sailors were arrested in Iranian
territorial waters are baseless."

They just hate to be left out of all the war-making fun.

Are you ready for 1,000 years of rising oceans?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish its report, the most complete overview of climate change science, in Paris on February 2 after a final review. It will guide policy makers combating global warming.

The draft projects more droughts, rains, shrinking Arctic ice and glaciers and rising sea levels to 2100 and cautions that the effects of a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will last far longer.

"Twenty-first century anthropogenic (human) carbon dioxide emissions will contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the timescales required for removal of this gas," the sources quoted the report as saying.

The good news? This century we should see oceans rise only a couple of feet. American coastal cities can get by like the Netherlands, with dikes and levees. Of course, neglectful Bushian attitudes about their maintenance, as evidenced in New Orleans, would have to go.

The draft projects temperatures will rise by 2 to 4.5 Celsius (3.6 to 8.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels with a "best estimate" of a 3C (5.4 F) rise, assuming carbon dioxide levels are stabilized at about 45 percent above current levels.

This could make el Niño seem like a little boy indeed.