Barack Obama (August 4, 1961 @ 7:24 pm Honolulu, Hawaii)

I was talking last night with my 11-year-old granddaughter, trying to explain race relations in the United States, and Canada. When I mentioned that Obama was the first black president, she said the words of the title of this post.

Then, I thought to myself, “Why have I taken so long, too?”

During the lead up to Obama’s second term, I began to get an inkling as to the depth of the political fallout from his presidency. White people didn’t like him, and it seemed to stem mainly from the colour of his skin (and the implication that he might be Muslim).

When he won that precious second term, the raw edges of radical right wing extremism began to show its ugly face again. How can one man be such a lightning rod?

As you have gathered by now (if you’d read any of my recent astrological posts) that I look for the undercurrents of the chart when analyzing it. This one has one Yod (Finger of God) and one inconjunct, but I don’t think those aspects would be enough to inflame a generation. Something else is operating here. And that something may be Mars in Virgo, timed for the lead up to his first election as a US Senator for Illinois.

This is the reason for his status as a Peaceful Warrior…

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.” On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying, “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t—frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.” (Wikipedia)

I could go on, but the man has already shown up to tell his own story very well, so I will just end with this: