And this past week I heard it in the most explicit terms. While speaking with a friend who is a yacht broker in the affluent Santa Monica coastal region of Southern California, I asked “what do people in your circles have to say about the presidential election? Are they even talking about it? What do they say?”

“Yes, people are talking about it” my friend assured me. “It’s assumed that Obama will win. But if he doesn’t, there’s a fear that South-Central LA will erupt in riots, kind of like what happened after the trial of the cops that beat Rodney King in 1992.”

I’m not a conspiracy theorist or alarmist. But I do believe that current cultural and political conditions are such that a McCain “victory” in November could create, at the very least, some significant tension in our society, if not outright civil unrest. Much of my concern has to do with a rather skewed, subjective, and selfish view of the notion of “injustice” that Obama himself has propagated throughout his campaign.

Think about it. On both implicit and explicit levels, Obama’s rhetoric suggests that the annoyances, the risks, the hardships and insecurities of your existence are the result of various injustices done to you, and that he alone can correct those injustices.

If a business executive earns exponentially more money than you do, this is an injustice and he will correct it. If you bought a house and are now having difficulty making the payments, this is an injustice and he will correct it. If you do not have “free healthcare,” this is an injustice and he will correct it. The fact that nuclear weapons exist in the world is an injustice, and he will correct it. If you purchased toys imported from China that turned out to be defective, that is an injustice and he will correct it (yes, he actually delivered a speech entitled “Safer Toys For Our Children” in Iowa last December, two days after Christmas). And if you believe, as he apparently does, that “rich people” just simply “have too much already,” well that is most certainly an injustice and he will correct it.

Combine these dynamics of entitlement and “justice” with the reality that we live in an era of historical and constitutional illiteracy, and it’s not difficult to imagine how anything short of an Obama presidency could be viewed by some in America as yet another injustice. And if Obama’s inevitable destiny is disrupted by something so trivial as the American electorate, this could be deemed an injustice that trumps all others.