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.

When I hear of human rights abuses in China, usually on the radio, it always seems to me as if this is something that should inspire public outrage, denial and flurried speech-making about how awful such things are. This, of course, is merely my personal emotional reaction based on the fact that I’m an extreme liberal who’s currently reading On Liberty and is thus fired up on such issues. But of late I’ve been thinking that in fact, maybe it would be better if we had more emotional, patriotic indignation surrounding the subject. It would be better than the downright apathy currently pervading so much of society on the issue of China’s abysmal record on and continuing ethos of human rights abuses by the state.

Among my peers, the pervading attitude is not even up to the rhetoric coming from our political leaders here in the West. While they may continue to trade with China, sell it arms and at the same time express their ‘deepest concern’ and other such clichés, the majority of those I know in my age group who have an opinion at all focus on the progress China has apparently made and how this outweighs any current suffering. They are blinded by the bright lights of the new skyscrapers and the profits to be hauled in by, or so it is portrayed, all and sundry who make an entrepreneurial attempt at business there. It’s the American Dream all over again. To them, the issues of human rights are entirely secondary to a country that is using its economy to improve the lives of ordinary people there and lift them out of poverty. But this is simply the usual excuses of those who stand to benefit materially from abuses and oppression.

It is a fallacy, I believe, to use progress in this way to justify an unacceptable situation and use this to treat China as if it were a country with a government that should be accepted as a peer on the world stage. It is as if closing half of the Nazi’s death camps means it is to be treated as a liberal democracy when the other half remain open. Sure, China now is better than China twenty years ago. But while the problems remain it is not something any other country should accept. Surely, it could be argued, trading with China encourages it to get even better. But instead this sends a message that things as they are now are okay, are being accepted. And this is not on. Even if China continues to make progress under the current accepting ethos of the West and improves steadily, think of all the abuses that will be inflicted in the meantime. It’s far away and out of mind for the businessmen reaping the rewards of such practices. And as is always the way it is the people of the country that suffer the most. I’m boycotting an olympics that has destroyed, without any sort of compensation, the homes of innocent Chinese people to build the facilities. My issue is with the Chinese government, not its brave people.

What, then, should be done? It would be extremely naive of me to call upon our governments to apply more pressure through the cessation of trade and the expansion of speeches attacking China’s record from those in positions of power. Governments are, it seems, always going to be useless at such things. But popular opinion remains a powerful force in global politics. The BBC and suchlike continue to provide damning evidence (see From Our Own Correspondent this morning for yet another example of police intimidation to foreign journalists followed by worse to their own people). The liberal press and the Internet continue to provide the arguments. We must push these values up people’s list of priorities. I’m not saying that this is achievable or something that all would agree on. I’m merely stating what I believe to be the only moral option.

It’s worth nothing too that I struggle to understand the motivation of China’s leaders. In the aforementioned BBC report this morning, the correspondent ended with similar confusion: what are China trying to hide? If they fear losing their position of power they should not, they control the army and various other appratus of state. Just look at the Tiananmen Square massacre. I can accept that democracy takes time for a country that hasn’t had it for so long, if ever. But why create a culture of fear where people are afraid to talk to foreign correspondents and students, historically the bravest of rebels, will only post their criticism of the government anonymously on their university message boards. The latter was an example given to me by a teacher of how China allows freedom of expression! Ha! Anonymity should never be a requirement, only an option. Otherwise, it indicates a state of fear.

Scanning back through this I sound even more like a railing loony liberal than I normally do, but maybe that’s a good thing; maybe it’s better than the apathy currently pervading those who will, in the future, influence the actions of the West. Or more likely, this little tirade will di sappear into the endless archives of the blogosphere, as insignificant as ever.