Inauguration Day

Today, CNN.com and Facebook partnered to provide live streaming video of the inauguration to Facebook users who could log in and monitor their friends comments during the coverage. It was interesting, but overall just another social marketing gimmick. That doesn't mean I didn't participate, it just means that I'm a judgmental cynic.

While I was watching the coverage and feverishly trying to keep pace with friends and their status updates, some of the comments really caught my eye, for good and bad reasons. Some of these were (and it's up to you to put value judgments on them...also, names are withheld because I'm at least a little discrete):

"...thinks it is interesting that in 05 Democrats were aghast that GW spent 40 mil on his innaugeration in a time of war. Obama is on track for 150 mil. hmmm."
"...is not unlike Lee Greenwood in the fact that today, she is proud to be an American."
"...is FEELING VERY PATRIOTIC, AND HOPING FOR THE BEST!"
"...is mushy about America."
"...is just happy to be alive today to see this."
"...didn't realize there was going to be a new president. Wasn't George elected King for life?"
"...still can't believe "we" elected a foreign-born Muslim!"
"...wonders if the country will wake up in three months with a hangover and a case of "coyote ugly"

Half of the comments are generically patriotic, the other half are partisan claptrap either anti-liberal or anti-conservative, or specifically anti-Obama vs. anti-Bush. I won't pretend that this is a representative sampling of the public at large. It's just a random sampling of people I know somehow in some way. And it's all either blind hope or senseless venom. Personally, I come down on the side of blind hope, and yet, I take no great comfort in it.

I think, the only thing I'm taking away from this random and scientifically insusbstantial sampling of comments by my facebook friends is that my faith in the ability of Americans to rally together as Americans is dying or dead. Conservatives will be conservatives to the bitter end, as liberals will be liberals, and partisan pants-pissing will forever distract us from governing the nation and ourselves.

Sweet Jesus, prove me wrong. I'm not asking Obama, or Biden, or Bush or Cheney or McCain. I'm asking America, if America is listening.

Hope and Change

One of my coworkers made a comment yesterday that stuck with me. It actually brought something up that became so pervasive in (nearly) eight years’ time that it rarely occurred to me; something that changed so thoroughly since 2001 that it’s transparent anymore (or at least was transparent until Tuesday). What he said was this: “Yes, there are a lot of conservative Americans. Possibly a majority. But the bigger factor was fear. People have been afraid of the government, and they had an opportunity reverse that,” and though it’s a simple point, it is very true. As a society, we shifted from apathy—especially our generation (X or Y, depending)—directly into fear. At first, we feared the terrorists. The Bush administration used that fear to great effect, manipulating it to consolidate power and justify imperialism. They’ve used fear virtually every day for the past 2700 or so days (since September 12, 2001), to “protect” our freedoms by systematically taking them away. Fear has been used to distract the people in this country from the macabre realities of the administration’s aims and actions.

For example, a point of pride in the history of the United States—that this is the land of opportunity, anyone can come here to make a better life—has been perverted by fear mongering against the defenseless target of immigrants. “Illegal” and “Immigrant” are now synonymous, and the people who have come here with hopes and dreams and ambitions, people who with their work not only improve themselves but improve the United States through their contributions, are attacked in words and in actions. Yes, we have to acknowledge that illegal immigration exists and is a problem, but we need not fear it. We have been browbeaten to fear everything that is not “American,” and to fear is to loathe. Furthermore, “American” has been defined as conservative jingoism and evangelical capitalism—make no mistake, not evangelical democracy.

Perhaps I’m being mawkish, but the beauty I see in the election of Barack Obama is that he did not run on a platform of anger or resentment, or revolution. He ran on two words—“Hope” and “Change.” People voted, in record numbers, for hope and change. The overwhelming, transparent fear that gripped Americans was broken by such simple, peaceful concepts. It seems precious and even trite, almost a fairy tale ending.

Will Barack Obama catalyze change in the way the American majority has demanded it? In one way, he already has. Something huge and completely unprecedented happened on Tuesday; someone of color, of the minority, was elected by the majority. This has not happened anywhere else in the modern western world, and is a testament that the United States is as dynamic as it can be static, as progressive as it can be conservative, as compassionate as it is individualistic. The real fairy tale is if he continues, and if unity prevails as a result. He has the potential to be the impetus; it is the people who will become the change. God willing, to borrow from Obama’s campaign, yes we can.

Baghdad

George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, Dick Cheney, and whomever else you'd like to name invaded Iraq and Bombed Baghdad with the intent of creating a "Shock and Awe" scenario to bring Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to their knees. In response to the shock and awe, the world shrugged.

Real shock and awe occurred last night, without a single bomb dropped or bullet fired. The United States of America elected Barack Obama, and the rest of the world has paused. Perhaps Americans are no longer afraid of their government. Perhaps we're no longer unwilling and unable to emulate the "United" portion of the States of America.

Shock and awe. For now, at least, our country, the world, is in shock and awe. That is an achievement.