Post-Logical - Guest Blogger

According to at least one well known, ardent supporter of the newly elected president, as of last Tuesday, our entire world has changed. I'm told that we should no longer calculate earthly years in the Latin denomination of Anno Domini, (A.D.) but instead in terms of B.O. and A.O. Yes, that's right – Before Obama and After Obama. Even before this historic election, my Portuguese banker quipped that President elect Obama was the new messiah. His smile, the banker's not Obama's, although beyond my complete discernment floated somewhere between sinister and scornful.

All of Europe expected the United States to elect an African American president, because of his skin color, although no nation in the EU would ever even consider electing a minority candidate. Can you imagine Germany electing a Jewish chancellor? The national exit polls show us that 95% of African Americans voted for the candidate of their race. Yet, I am supposed to believe that we have now catapulted into a “post-racial” era. We are supposed to believe that we are suddenly beyond the capacity of discrimination...that we have reached a heightened level of consciousness. I don't buy it one bit.

No, instead, we have simply changed how certain terms are, indeed defined. For instance, I heard no cries of racism when the new Black Panther Party tried to intimidate white people from voting in Philadelphia, but many considered it racism to disagree with someone's ideas though their skin be a different color. Again, it has been deemed questionable for chaplains in the military to pray in the name of Jesus, but no questions are raised when children in government schools are taught how to pray to Allah, in the name of cultural awareness. Despicably, if a man murders a lady who is pregnant with an unborn child, he stands judged for the death of two people, but if a mother pays a doctor to extract her child from the womb before it is born, thus ending the baby's life, we champion her right of choice and his right to practice medicine.

No, just because we elected the first black president, we are not beyond discrimination, but we seem to be beyond consideration. Therefore, I submit a more accurate explanation of our current social state. From now on, why don't we just say that we live post-logical society. It would certainly be more factually correct. To be clear and unequivocal, I absolutely abhor racism – on every level. There are plenty of black men that I would support for president – Alan Keyes, Colin Powell, Larry Elder, Lynn Swann, Alan West, Bill Cosby – if he ever decided to run. My three best friends in college were Korean, Mexican, and African American. I am a foreigner living here in Portugal and at times feel the slight sting of cultural stereotypes. My father, whose grandfather came from Poland, often recalls growing up in Buffalo, New York where there was nothing worse than being a “polock.”

Yet, let's no longer equate skin color with merit, or bondage for liberty, or rhetoric for wisdom, and if that is what we are going to do, then let's call it what it really is – illogical. Post-logical. It has a nice ring to it. Yes, I submit that we now live in a post-logical world.

No, wait, I'm sorry, we can't call it that. It would make too much sense.

written by Michael Andrzejewski for The LaGrange Daily News.