Today history will be made, today the world will be changed for better or worse. Today, the most powerful country in a world that divides itself such camps based on concepts of so-called ‘national identity’, culture and even race will decide who it wants as its leader, who it chooses to place in what is probably the most powerful job on the planet. It’s been a fantastically vibrant and involved election. The turnout is predicted to be very high, and there are so many factors involved even today no-one really knows which way it will go. I certainly have no idea. Obama has captured a massive chunk of a conservative nation’s favour through his fantastic oratory. The polls all predict a win. Yet McCain has bounced back again and again, and there is nothing to suggest he won’t manage that again. Both sides have things holding them back. The world is dissatisfied with Bush’s Republican run of the presidency, but Barack Obama faces the question of his race. If America finds itself capable of putting aside the simple colour of his skin, and his unusual name, humanity will have shown itself capable of moving a pretty significant step closer to the end of simple and unreasonable prejudices. If Americans can put aside their tribalistic drives for what is the most important job in the world, even if it is less important than it once was, then the presidency itself will have massive potential for change. America’s credibility as a voice on the world stage that isn’t there purely due to economic might will be enhanced. Racism will seem old-fashioned, and the race-blind young as they are called will flourish and old prejudices will wither and die.

Our world isn’t in fantastic shape at the moment. As in the fifties when the Cold War was at its nuclear peak, we feel afraid of external threats, but from within we also face massive problems. Warzones only get worse across the world: the Congo has recently erupted into full-scale battle; the Middle East is as violent as usual and no-one seems to have any solutions. Nuclear weapons and other such terrors remain stockpiled, and the West hypocritically demands that smaller states cease their quest for them, raising backs more than anything else. In so-called civilised nations, utilitarianism returns to make torture and abuse of human rights morally acceptable as a salve for the fear that grips the countries, once bastions of human rights and civil liberties, that have now sunk into depravity in the name of a little temporary security. And from within consumerism and rampart capitalism maintains the expectancy of the impossibility that is infinite growth, of always getting more for less. Community collapses, education becomes entirely based around capital in one’s later life, and people lose sight of the greatness that humanity can achieve through thought, consideration and generosity to others, rather than a selfish desire to smother pains with ignorance and material goods. And then, on top of all of this, the human race faces extinction from climate change, or from wars against each other over dwindling natural resources. With our free market situation it seems to me that it’ll only become economical to do something about this threat when it’s already too late - at least for some, if not all, of us.

But despite these problems we still have one resource that is so very important and so very powerful. We have people. People might be selfish and uncaring, but they can also show incredible altruism, respect and thoughtfulness. Humans have already achieved so much more than solving the above list of grievances. We’ve constructed ideas and fields of science and technology from a primitive existence in caves and forests. We have thought our way outside of ourselves and outside the confines of this doubtable empirical world, and we’ve struggled for truth in the battlefield of ideas. If we can vote in Obama, if we can show that we’re more than mere nature and biology would define us as, then we’re making the first step onto a path to better things. Come on America. Let us remember this day in history with pride.