Obama Wins, People Cheer, Google Trends Disturb

I think it is quite visible that the overall mood online since last night when we got to know that Barack Obama won in the presidential race has been quite positive with most voices cheering the president-elect and expressing hopes for the promised change that he has promised to bring. But it would have been a complete nonsense without loud opponents, of course – and I am sure you have seen plenty of them already in comments on political blogs, for example, or on Twitter.

But to me the most disturbing thing today is what I see on Google Trends today with abundance of various negative and even hateful search terms among the most popular search queries on Google.

It looks like people are finally trying to understand exactly what they should expect from their newly-elected president – and some of their guesses are depressing, I think. For example, among the most popular search terms are “obama antichrist” and “KKK Obama”. Here the KKK one seems to be most disturbing given the fact that KKK members called for a race war if Barack Obama was elected.

Also “obama muslim” looks far from appropriate to me. Why is it all that necessary to be so very much concerned about the religious views of your president? Why is it necessary to call him everywhere the “first black president” (also one of the popular search phrases)? I am not a US citizen myself but I think it is at the very least strange to think about the president as black or white, young or old, bald or hairy – after all, he is elected to rule the country and not help the minorities (or should we expect bald presidents to subsidize hospitals helping people get their hair back?).

It is quite understandable that some people simply don’t know Barack Obama well enough and simply want to understand who the man is and what his politics will mean for them and the country. In this sense it is good watching people searching for “obama biography” and “obama family” but still there are other people, those who are obviously aggressive. This aggression is plain shocking to me.

I personally don’t like media outlets (especially international) referring to the election results as game-changing only because the country elected the person who happens not to be white for the first time in its history. There are lots of changes Barack Obama promises and he inherits tons of things he will need to fix after the Bush presidency. Of course for now we can not know if promises and actions will coincide but was the color of his skin the reason people voted for or against him? If so, I think the US must really be in trouble – and if anything, it is confirmed by what people are searching for on Google today.