Has everyone lost their marbles? The inauguration of President Obama is being treated like the Second Coming.
The coverage is so gushing we might all drown. Of course it's a great thing that America, with its history of slavery and segregation still a shockingly recent memory, now has a black President; the palpable joy of African-Americans is entirely understandable and deeply touching. And there's no doubt that Obama is a highly charismatic and attractive personality.
But what's more than a wee bit troubling is that the swooning hysteria reflects the fact that people appear to believe that as of today the world will be saved. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares, peace will be brought to the Middle East, Iran will be pacified, every American will have health insurance, poverty will be eliminated and utopia will have arrived.
Crowds: Thousands of people have been waiting through the night to gain access to the National Mall for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama
Sorry to be a party pooper but I'm afraid I must register a small note of dissent. It's not just that people have projected onto the person of Obama expectations that - especially given the world financial crisis - cannot possibly be met.
I think that the desperate dangerousness and complexity of our world and a profound terror of what properly facing up to its problems would entail have led people to believe a cartoon version of why we're in such a state - and to have invested their hopes similarly in a fantasy figure of hope, to such an extent that they have shut their ears to some very loud warning bells ringing from his past history.
People believe that Obama represents a renunciation of an America that throws its weight around the world. And they think it's that 'war-mongering' characteristic, represented in particular by President Bush and the war in Iraq, which has caused so much global trouble and resentment.
Like the hydra, the enemy now waging war on the west has many heads - but it is one enemy, and it feeds in particular on the perception that the west is weak and is no longer willing to defend itself by military means.
The very reason that so many in the west are so entranced by Obama is thus the very reason why our enemies are today rubbing their hands in satisfaction.
Obama stands for 'soft power' - the replacement of military action in defence of his nation by talking, negotiation and compromise. But with people who have non-negotiable and unconscionable agendas - such as Iran's genocidal intention to wipe Israel off the map and destroy the west - such an approach merely plays into their hands while catastrophically undermining more moderate regimes and allies.
And there's a still more troubling aspect of America's new President. For his whole career has been solidly embedded in an ultra-radical tradition which believes in revolution from the grass-roots up - and which teaches that to gain power, an activist must pose as a centrist while pursuing his real agenda of radicalising the people and revolutionising society.
Cleverly drawing upon the little-observed fact that the appeasement-minded folk who took control in the second, terminally weakened stage of the Bush administration have an approach to the world's conflicts which is strikingly similar to anti-war left-wingers, he has neutralised concerns about his supposed radicalism by assembling a governmental team which appears to be so centrist it is merely carrying on much as before.
A more careful look at all his appointments, particularly those in the second tier, reveals however a rather different and more troubling picture.
But that's all for the future. Today, no-one can predict just how the Obama presidency will turn out. He may indeed be constrained not just by current difficulties but by events not yet forseen. He may change his mind about a lot of things as a result. He may on the other hand opt for expediency until an opportunity presents itself for the kind of 'change' he dreams of. He may even turn out to be well-intentioned but hampered by inexperience and naivety. Who knows? All we can do is watch and hope that this new President does not plunge us all into even greater peril yet.
Saul Alinsky, the immensely influential far-left ideologue who invented the role of grass-roots 'community organiser' that Obama filled for so many years, laid out in his book Rules for Radicals that the revolution could only be brought about by stealth politics.
This is what he wrote: 'This is the job for today's radical - to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight. To say, 'You cannot turn away - look at it - let us change it together!' 'Look at us. We are your children. Let us not abandon each other for then we are all lost. Together we can change it for what we want...it is a job first of bringing hope and doing what every organiser must do with all people, all classes, places and times - communicate the means or tactics whereby the people can feel that they have the power to do this and that and on
'Tactics must begin with the experience of the middle class, accepting their aversion to rudeness, vulgarity and conflict. Start them easy, don't scare them off...Tactics such as stock proxies and others are waiting to be hurled into the attack...'
'Change' and 'hope': does that strike a chord with anyone? Just bear this in mind when you hear today's soaring rhetoric as America's 44th president is sworn in.
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