Eight years ago, the Onion ran an article about Bush's inauguration. The headline, a quote from the Onionverse's Bush inauguration speech, read "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over."
Who knew then how prophetic the little satiric newspaper would be?
After Obama's inauguration, I think the entire globe let out its breath for the first time in years. We barely got out alive.
In any case, Obama's speech seemed, at times, a thinly veiled rebuke of the Bush years and an only lightly coded message to America and the world that that whole nonsense - the anti-science, the fanaticism, the extra-legality, the unilateralism, the arrogance, the warmongering, the anti-environmentalism, and the anti-regulatory attitude - were all in the past and an aberration at that. Add to this the subtle charge that it was time for America to grow up and leave behind its reckless teenage years and the speech seemed to cover the next four years like a blanket. The rhetoric was not high flying most of the time, but the sentiment was intense and grounded in a way that felt reassuring, even in its sobriety.
I, for one, feel, for the first time in years and years, in awe of my country and civilization. Nothing will come off quite as well as I might dream it will, I'm sure, but everything is going to be better (it would have a hard time being worse).
I've never been so close to buying a flagpole.
America on, bitches.
p.s. how cool is Barack Obama? check out the new Whitehouse website, where you can, among other unprecedented transparencies, read the actual text of any and all executive orders, see the name and appointment of every single person nominated for a job by the executive branch, and read the actual text of the agenda the pres. plans to pursue while in office. I know it makes me a nerd and a wonk, but I get all curfluffled over ethics and civics. Oprah can have her grand love stories and tales of overcoming hardship - give me the simpler and deeper pleasures of an open and responsive democracy any day to get me all misty eyed.
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