I'm new. Please explain the big deal about this? Really. I mean it because I want to be excited too.

If you have to ask - you're likely never going to understand.

You'd need to have some familiarity with the history of America.

With what the slaves went through. How Africans were hunted, captured, sold into slavery, shipped to the New World. How they drove the economy of the new country, working on plantations.

You'd have to know what kind of suffering the Civil War inflicted on people all over the country - and the millions of people who were killed and injured during its horrific battles (pre-morphine days). You'd have to know what Abraham Lincoln really achieved - and why he's considered, arguably, one of our greatest Presidents.

If you have not read the Gettysberg Address, I strongly recommend it. It is not possible to read without weeping. If you find yourself unable to feel anything after reading that stirring speech, you might never understand.

While I'm at it, you should have started with reading the Constitution - the entire thing. The amendments will help you understand where we started from, the weaknesses of the original statements, and how they were addressed.

You would have to have some passing familiarity with the Jim Crowe era. And then the civil rights movement.

There are many scholars and historians and teachers and students who'd give you a far better reading list.

I'll suggest a very random sample:

1. Black like me (Howard Griffin)
2. A Country of Strangers - Black and White in America (David Shipley)
3. The Color of Water (James McBride)
4. Thurgood Marshall, A Biography (Juan Williams)
5. Sula (Toni Morrison, fiction)
6. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Alex Haley)
7. Rosa Parks - My Story
8. Martin Luther King Jr., Speeches, (everything)

And perhaps you'll need an appreciation of just how significant democracy actually is in the progress of the human species (over the last, say, 10,000 years). Individuals had a fairly rotten time of it - ruled over by liegelords and slaveowners and kings and all manner of a handful of the very priviledged and brutalized to a degree we have forgotten.

And perhaps you might need to be a political junkie - and a history junkie, and have an interest in current affairs and have followed this election for 2 years.

And perhaps you might need to have seen the erosion of our constitutional rights, of environmental progress, scientific progress, seen the abuse of power, the utter disrespect for the constitution, for our founding fathers, for human life that this administration has demonstrated.

And perhaps you will need to be aware of just badly the middle class of this country has had it for the last eight years - and for many of the previous twenty.

And how we stand on the cusp of a watershed event, a line in the sand of history that will direct our future success. And then perhaps, just perhaps, you'll understand just how significant each vote that Barak Obama gets is.