Acting President Barack Obama and the Irony of History

Have we already elected Obama as President? Sometimes it seems that way. But let us not be fooled, .Proverbs 21:1 expresses an incontrovertible truth:

פַּלְגֵי־מַיִם לֶב־מֶלֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהוָה

עַל־כָּל־אֲשֶׁר יַחְפֹּץ יַטֶּנּוּ

Channeled water is the mind of the king in the hand of יהוה;

    he directs it wherever he will.

Whoever becomes President, Barack Obama or John McCain, he will not be the captain of his own destiny. The actions he takes, the adjustments he will make along the way, will be touched by irony over and over again. For a first list of such ironies by Walter Russell Mead, an excellent political historian, go here. For an account of a newly discovered Messianic oracle which suggests that this post of mine is totally off-base, go here.

For an excerpt from Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History, and a Barack Obama quote referring to him as “one of my favorite philosophers,” go here. For a discussion of Tolstoy’s deployment of Proverbs 21:1 in the context of his philosophy of history, go here.