President Elect Obama made a rare misstep today, naming quack author preacher Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration. In one sense, this could be seen as simple political payback, since Warren granted Obama a degree of authenticity among the mythology-minded by inviting him to his 'church' before the junior Senator from Illinois had really registered on the electoral radar.
Unfortunately, the real motivation may have been a sincere effort toward the ideal of bipartisanship. Inviting Warren could be seen as saying, 'I don't marginalize all of you true believers'. Yet, at the same time, it is distinctly separatist in granting the exclusionary view of Warren's perverted world view (no gay marriage, no science if I don't say so, etc.) the lead off spot in the Inauguration batting order. This is wrong.
On the other hand, today also raised the potential for a true healing moment this nation needs--the prosecution of Dick Cheney (and hopefully others). You probably remember the days when the act of denying fellatio was seen prosecution-worthy in order to prove that, 'no man is above the law'. (No matter that the reality was that no state or municipality in our country would have moved forward against this 'crime').
Cheney's final act of defiance--in effect, saying, 'yeah, so I cooked the intelligence books in order to needlessly send thousands of people to their death...yeah, I did declare torture legal just because I said so--so what?...'--this man is daring Obama to call his bluff.
There are millions of us who fervently supported the Obama campaign to change the tone--and the tone, in this case, is to prevent traitors like Cheney to do what he wants and laugh at the rest of us.
Lock him up.
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