How many Americans know much about Obama as we, Salon readers and other politically curious people, do? How many really know he isn't "black" black, as defined by the article's author at least, but something else?

It isn't his heritage that's attracting so many white voters, like me, it's what he has to say and how he says it. This guy could be Korean, Irish or Martian and I'd be tempted to line up behind him. Clinton sounded similiar themes and I lined up behind him too. He didn't even contrast so strongly with his predecessor as Obama does with George W. Sure there are well-spoken white candidates like Biden and Edwards out there but they both feel so practiced, polished, and as if they're trying too hard. Obama comes off like a guy who's thinking things through and trying to give his the best responsive answer he can without, nakedly at least, showing off for the cameras.

That said, the questions posed about his funding and his support for various energy proposals do get my curiousity up. Some of his answers, of late, in the public eye strike me as increasingly less forthright and candid. I suspect the latter, at least, is the inevitable result of consultants piling on and trying to tweak his message. That's the last thing Obama needs. His authenticity as a leader, and he does strike me as that, is what matters most to me.

But the main point is that most white people don't know enough about Obama to even begin to grasp the kinds of assumptions you're attributing to white support for him.

Yes, I know - my dad's an Apple fanatic. Then again he's an engineer with more icons on his screen to oversee the innards of his favorite toy than actual applications he runs. So I know Leopard can run Windows programs these days. In theory. In practice computer gamers are the folks who buy new computers because the need the power to run the latest games. And those games don't always run very well on native Windows PCs much less on the Apple. Some do. Some don't. It's a crapshoot from what I've read.

If all folks need is to surf the internet, send mail and look at their photo albums or run numbers through spreadsheets they don't need much in the way of power. So who is all this power for? All the video editors out there? I don't think so.

It's for gamers. While PC gamers are a smaller bunch than console gamers we're still part of a huge industry and we're also the early adopters for PCs.

So if Apple wants us it better get some good games that are created for Apple PCs. Because we're not going to wait a couple years for a fraction of the titles available on the PC to filter over to the Apple.

I didn't know if Obama could do it, but he did. I've got plenty of cynical and worldly wise friends, I'm plenty cynical and worldly wise myself - but after seven years of Bush I really want to feel like I can believe in someone. Is that naive? He says he'll tell us what we need to know, not just what we need to hear.

If he really does that alone then he's worlds apart from most other candidates and Presidents.

I think commentators who are cynics are going to find themselves well out of step this coming year. I think Obama's going all the way. And I think the good showing by Huckabee, whom I disagree with on more issues than I care to dwell on, shows a similiar interest on the Republican side in sticking to what they sincerely believe in while showing open contempt for what Bush and establishment figures are all about.

We can trash fundamentalists all we like but ultimately they're sticking around and so are we. Now they've got a face that doesn't come with fangs pre-installed. If Huck keeps his momentum going as well, a far bigger "if" than Obama's looking at, I'm really interested to see what Obama and Huckabee are going to say to each other in a national campaign.

Maybe we'll have two inspiring people who represent genuinely different points of view, who also - I believe, or want to believe - speak sincerely about bringing this country together facing off. What is that going to look like? Or are the Ed Rollins of this campaign going to make it the same old nasty morass it always is?

No, don't tell me. I am naive. But let nobody say I didn't deliberately chose, knowingly and with an informed perspective, to be naive.

This country is ready for a sea change. Just hope our freshly scrubbed, inspiring, candidates live up to it.

Reading that review was like reading a summary of the old Mage: Ascention roleplaying game's interpretation of reality. Ancient conspiracies of Hermetic, and other, Traditional mages engaged in eternal struggle against the secret societies controlled by The Technocracy. The battle for Ascention is the battle over consensus. Changing the minds of the masses, freeing them from the stagnation of The Technocracy's scientific, mechanical, and bland worldview the route to all human evolution. But only a few know the secrets of the universe and can weild them.

Or maybe Mage's designers did more homework on their setting than I gave 'em credit for.

At least their game came with a disclaimer.