Can the “political Messiah” levy a penalty tax on himself?

Politics is a contagious disease - almost hereditary; you get it from those who had been previously in power.

Politics is also incurable; it is a permanent healing campaign against those ailments left behind by previous rulers.

In this way the USA originated as a campaign of healing in British America - Britain's erstwhile North American colonies of the 18th and 19th century.

Today I am writing a letter from British America and in particular from Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, one of those former British American colonies.

It is November 4, 2008. This historic day will end hysterically with a crowd welcoming Barack Obama in Chicago as America's 44th president-elect.

Mid-morning my friend Dan Fuller and I enter the polling station in the St. Andrew By-the-Sea church hall on Hilton Head Island. The four polling station officials at the head table ignore me as I stand around reading posters and trying to appear as local as a Hilton Head golf course alligator.

Luckily it's Tuesday. If it had been a Sunday I would have had to come to church with a rifle. Apparently South Carolina still has a law making it compulsory for an adult male to bring a rifle to church on Sundays in case of potential Red Indian attacks.

Yes really.

But then again an archaic American law also stipulates that Presidential elections have to take place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November so that farmers can travel from farms to towns and back without missing church on Sunday and, in the case of South Carolina of course, to be in church with a rifle in hand keeping an eye on ill-humoured Red Indians.

Dan hovers attentively in voting mode over one of four electronic touch screens.

This is a life or death election struggle here on Hilton Head. In addition to the Presidential candidates there is a string of other positions on the election list including that of the local coroner. For a moment I wonder how much work the alligators on the island's golf courses create for the elected coroner every year.

South Carolina is conservatively Republican. In 1860 it was the first state to leave the USA in order to retain slavery - an argument that led to the American Civil War.

According to Dan Fuller most voters in South Carolina think that Barack Obama would want to increase taxes. And taxes are serious food for thought in South Carolina. After all, it was in protest against the taxes of King George III that South Carolina also unilaterally left British America to form the USA with 12 other states in 1776.

Suddenly I wonder what the conservative voters in the church hall would say if they were to know that I was standing around as a descendant of a certain George Rex of Knysna in South Africa. According to rumour, although there are counterarguments, my ancestor, George Rex was said to have been the illegitimate son of the selfsame mad King George III from whom South Carolina had broken away.

On the other hand they would probably have approved of my anti-English grandfather George and his sister Rex. Granddad George, a Boer prisoner of war in Ceylon, refused to return to South Africa and live under a British flag in 1902. Instead he went to Argentina and lived there for 12 years as a gaucho (cowboy). Luckily for me, at the outbreak of a rebellion in South Africa in 1914, he decided to say "adios" to Buenos Aires and whisper "hello girl" to my grandmother in South Africa.

My friend Dan nods and we leave the polling station.

Later on, when Dan is already at his office, I sit with a Phillips screwdriver in hand on a carpet with 12 wood panels strewn around me like autumn leaves and bags of screws and bolts in front of me reading the assembly instructions for a desk that I am trying to put together.

Panel number three has a sticker which declares that the whole caboodle was manufactured in China.

"You know," I tell my wife, "Barack Obama said on TV yesterday that he would levy a penalty tax on those American firms that outsource American jobs to countries like China. Here I am now, sitting flat on my bum, and what have the Chinese done? They have outsourced their labour to me here in the USA to build their desk. The Chinese government will definitely not think of a penalty tax on the Chinese firm. Do you think Obama understands international trade?"

"Well, many people regard him as a kind of political Messiah. He will definitely be voted in," she replies.

My wife has a sharp brain and I have two left hands.

I just keep on plugging away at assembling my desk.

Later that evening we sit in front of the television and watch millions of people in emotional ecstasy over Obama’s victory.

And in my mind’s eye I see a few workers the next day as they change information signs at the White House.

At the fountain in the White House garden a sign that says: “Do not walk on the water please. Thank you."

On the wall in the President's personal toilet over his wash-basin a sign that states: "Don't change the water into wine please. Thank you."

And I wonder if those stickers on the back of the White House signs would state: “Made in China."

The chances are probably good that the tools of the White House workers would in any case be of Chinese origin.

And then I wonder whether the President of America could levy a penalty tax on himself.