Politics

So I'm sure everyone who ever blogged is writing about Obama's presidency win in the U.S. After all, it is a historic moment, and certainly much more interesting than Canada's own election, from which basically nothing changed. I haven't been following the campaigns at all and neither understand nor have much interest in politics. But I coincidentally came across an interesting passage in a book tonight.

"Always funny, Mr. Thwaite [a famous political journalist in the book] is also deadly serious: 'None of this is a game,' he says of politics and journalism. 'It may look like it, it may look like a circus sometimes, but that's only from the luxurious vantage point of the United States in 2001. Ask people anywhere else - Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East, sure, but also China, Algeria, Russia, even Western Europe, and they'll remind you of what you ought to know: this is life and death stuff. There's nothing more important than this.'"

- The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud

Made me stop in my tracks and consider just how important an election - any election for a position of power - is. I'll have to start following politics and trying to understand it more I guess. Then again, if the New Agers are right and the world ends on December 21, 2012, it won't really matter!