It is nice to think in terms of dreams, of Camelot, and Fairy Tales, but when the realities of the current world includes many wars, globalization, a potential international monetary crisis as never seen before, even a possible global depression – then we have to be a realist and separate the men from the boys and we should elect Al Gore as the next United States president in November 2008.
Here is a foreign perspective which could be just a snap shot of what millions of people from around the world are thinking about the 2008 US presidential race:
Yesterday, I was talking to a cousin of mine in Brazil – today she is ninety years old, but she has a better memory than a lot people who are thirty years old. I enjoy talking to her since it is like talking to a living encyclopedia, she is the process of publishing her 7th book, and she already started writing her next book.
On these books she is recording and documenting with pictures and all kinds of documents the history of Brazil regarding the Andrada e Silva Family influence in Brazilian history.
There is no more influential family in Brazilian history than the Andrada e Silva Family and they have almost 100 members of the family since the early 1800’s who served the Brazilian government at all levels, and were involved in politics – there were various Prime Ministers, Finance Ministers, Minister of the Navy, state governors (many years ago they used to be called presidents of these states), Senators at the federal level, and also senators at the state level, many Deputados Federais (congressmen), many mayors, Attorney General, and a number of Ambassadors who represented Brazil on foreign lands.
Today, when that branch of the family gets together for any family function, it seems more like a political convention than anything else, because there are so many politicians in the family.
Usually when we talk on the telephone she gives me an up date regarding what she is working on and also about the other historians in Brazil who are working on books about some of the members of our family who contact her asking questions and to get clues regarding where they should research next to find the information that they are looking for.
But yesterday when I was talking to my cousin she started telling me that today they are all following the US presidential race in Brazil with a lot of interest.
I asked her why so much interest?
First, because they are showing on television in Brazil the US presidential campaign more than any other time before.
Second, because of the way the American mainstream media has framed the US presidential race in the US about gender (Hillary) and color of the skin (Obama.)
She told me that the immediate members of her family were hoping that the "O Pretinho" - that is the term that she used – would win the election and become the next president of the United States.
Pretinho in Portugues means the very young black man.
She told me it would be very interesting for the rest of the world including Brazil – if the United States elected a very young black man as its new president.
A thought came to mind when she was talking about the "O Pretinho" and his alck of real experience, because we had an almost similar situation in Brazil many years ago.
When Dom Pedro I (The first Emperor of Brazil) abdicated in favor of his young son (5 years old at that time) they had to create a Regency of 3 men in Brazil to govern the country until the new Emperor reached the legal age of 18 years old. But when the Emperor was 14 years old there were so much political problems in Brazil that they had to emancipate him despite his young age and lack of experience, and he became Emperor of Brazil with full authority at age 14.
This particular Fairy Tale actually had a nice ending, since that Emperor ended up governing Brazil for over 50 years, and he turned out to be a very good Emperor and leader.
The major difference here is that. First the Brazilian Emperor was white, and he did not have to deal with the issue of color of his skin.
Second, Brazil did not have to confront head on at that time a perfect storm, and today such an event it will require the knowledge and the seasoning of a very experienced person, and with a proven track record.
It is nice to think in terms of dreams, of Camelot, and Fairy Tales, but when the realities of the current world includes many wars, globalization, a potential international monetary crisis as never seen before, even a possible global depression – then we have to be a realist and separate the men from the boys and we should elect Al Gore as the next United States president in November 2008.
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