I have seen the face of God

As well as being a man who is going to make the American financial position much worse, through the deliberate instigation of trillion dollar deficits, I really have no idea why the Americans (and the BBC, The Grauniad, Channel4, ad nauseam) are getting so worked up about this one single man.

Is it because Obama has more skin melanin than previous incumbents? If so, why is this such a big deal these days? Nobody batted an eyelid when Morgan Freeman played a man with similar amounts of skin melanin, in Deep Impact:

For a long time after this film, I thought Morgan Freeman was the President of the United States! :-)

He was certainly a lot more believable than the preposterous George W. Bush.

Freeman was of course followed up by the even more believable Dennis Haysbert, as President David Palmer in 24, a man so full of moral goodness that even I would have voted for him:

Morgan Freeman and Dennis Haysbert made the idea of a black president entirely believable, and to my mind, even more plausible than the idea of the usual Old White Guy, although D.B.Woodside did almost spoil this effect with his rather emotive portrayal of President Wayne Palmer, in Series 6 of 24:

It's actually got to the point where any person of any race, creed, or colour, can play the President of the USA, except an Old White Guy.

For instance, in Series 7 of 24, the latest incarnation of the Sun God, President Alison Taylor, is being played delightfully by Cherry Jones, as an evil self-obsessed caricature of Hillary Clinton, the politician whom the script writers probably thought most likely to get the part when they wrote the original drafts:

Let's face it, the "part" of playing President of the United States, really is just a part. Whoever you are, you must be a certified member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a favoured disciple of the Rockefeller family. As long as you turn up, sound good, and read the lines, you can get the starring role. The payoff is enormous wealth, plus a golden ticket into the hallowed halls of the world elite for your entire family, for the rest of time.

Or at least until the revolution comes.

Oh well, I suppose we better let the Americans have their day. It's going to make zip all difference to their economic plight, which has a long way to go before it becomes fully unfolded. Don't worry though, sports fans. It will unfold. Set your alarms for when US Treasuries start collapsing.

If you want to get a picture of what that will be like, perhaps for the UK as well as for the US, the best dystopian prediction I have seen is Alongside Night, by J. Neil Schulman:

First written in 1979, this book is becoming more horribly true by the day.

All hail the God-King!

Oh yes, and it will all be George Bush's fault.