The law office where I work in Athens, Greece, does a lot of international business, so international relations are of some interest to them. I'm here because I was at loose ends, looking for work without success in New York, and the senior partner decided to take a chance on me, adding a lawyer who spoke the international language of business as his native tongue. The lawyers here are all intelligent people, and they all know what an influence an American president can have on the world at large. They also know that I'm the only member of the office who has a vote in the upcoming election.
Practically to the last, they want to see Obama win; they're not thrilled with McCain, and they are frankly appalled by Palin's antics and rhetoric. There were even joking threats to ostracize me if I cast my vote for McCain.
But on the other hand, from people at the firm as well as some family members here, there's a dark feeling that Obama's not going to make it ... that he'll share the fate of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
There's a history of bloody politics in Greece, of course; there have been assassinations in the past, dating back to Kapodistras, Greece's first head of state after they won their independence from the Ottomans, and worse: from 1967 to 1974, the country was under a brutal military dictatorship.
Occasionally, one can find people who lament the fall of the Colonels, and wish their heirs might come back to restore order to a society they see as completely dysfunctional. And because one sees others through the filter of one's own experiences, they probably see similar elements working in the United States. The way my uncle put it, the people who control the money in the United States will see Obama as a threat, the same way they saw Kennedy as a threat, and they will deal with Obama the same way they dealt with Kennedy.
Leaving aside whether Kennedy's death was the work of a conspiracy or a lone nut, I answered that if thing went that far, we might be looking at a new civil war in the United States. (Greece has had that experience, too, in the immediate wake of World War II.)
That was two months ago, before the market meltdown, before the moneyed interests became desperate for survival. But in the meantime, I've seen the rhetoric ramp up, the crazies get more vocal, so when one of the partners chatted me up yesterday about the elections, and echoed my uncle's view that Obama wouldn't survive ... I didn't have an answer.
Make no mistake, Obama's the popular choice here. The conservative-leaning newspaper Kathimerini did an opinion poll in August, and the general population skewed in Obama's favor, eighty percent to five percent. His lowest level of support came from the leftist parties, at only seventy-seven percent.
They want to see Obama. It's just that they're convinced that a sizable portion of the American population is completely nuts, gone straight round the bend (on many winding roads, you'll find little shrines or crosses, marking points where some unfortunate failed to make the turn, went over the edge, and fell to his or her doom), and that we'll destroy him.
And after reading about the "kill him!" rally, and the rhetoric amping up that somehow Barack Obama is a terrorist and a traitor, I can't say they're wrong.
I'm going nuts trying to get my absentee ballot. Mailed and faxed my application to the New York County office, and couldn't get a straight answer as to whether they'd even gotten it. Finally sent another copy to my mother, along with a written and signed authorization for her to pick it up and forward it to me. I'll be damned if I get shut out of this election.
What I can't do is give the lie to the people here, my friends, who are convinced that even if he wins, he won't make it.
That's up to you folks back home.