the tough stuff america has had to deal with. i think this is the time because it seems to be a tipping point what happened in charleston. i think in many respects it has been. one of the strengths obama has is you know, he s lost a lot of political battles, pushbacks on his presidency. in terms of the long-term demographic changes in the nation president obama is something of a prophet figure because he presages and i mean that solely in the sense that he is the symbol of the kind of america we are going to be seeing in the 21st century. and a lot of these resis tantd and resistant impulses symbolized by the confederate flag. those people who are trying to fight the gay civil rights