Thursday, January 22, 2009
Obama finally got to me
Obama's inauguration speech wasn't streaming too well in my class (I was teaching) so I didn't see it live, but I did hear most of the NPR rebroadcast on the way home. At one point my cynical body did something it rarely does anymore: I got a tingle from my head all the way down through my legs. I'm more trusting of that tingle as I like to think I'm a bit more immune to kitsch and overwrought patriotism (e.g. certainly Ronald Reagan, if he were alive, couldn't cause the kind of emotion he did when I heard him speak at BYU). Also, I was impressed by my friend's, in The Cold Cold North, proclamation of hope. Finally, what brought me to the brink of hope, I listened to a This American Life podcast on the upcoming (at that point) inauguration. Even several conservatives expressed how they had softened and had more hope in Obama than they thought they would. And so....I've turned the corner (Note: I was almost derailed when on the same TAL program they discussed how Bush is STILL freakin more popular with the marines even though the VA representatives say the Bush administration hasn't supported any of their policies to support veterans). Drum role please..... I'm now officially prepared to say that I'm hopefully pessimistic.
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3 comments:
I like how you frame your hope as pessimism instead of, say, cautious optimism. What does that say about you? I hope that, within 100 days of the Obama administration (!!), you find yourself optimistic. Just optimistic, that's all. I'm pretty sure that's in his goals for the first 100 days.
I was never optimistic about Obama to begin with, but, after hearing of his cabinet appointments and listening to his speech, I now see nothing but a new face of American corporate fascism. My only hope now is that after he fails miserably to give the people what they think he'll give them, the country might start to wake up and realize that the system can't be fixed--and then we might get some REAL change.
Sorry to rain on the parade.
I prefer to think of our democratic-repulic hybrid political bourgeois on a continuum. The bush years would be near one end driving further in that direction.
I, too, listened to much of Obama's speech (the pre-recorded quartet with Yo YO Ma was the acme), and was moved by his words. Obama certainly can deliver a speech.
I see his administration moving in the other direction on the continuum. This gives me some pessimistic hope (the phraseology works for me) as well.
I do think that the system is hanging by a thread and that a true revolution of thought is needed. A whole new continuum, if you will... Guess I fall somewhere between you and Shane.
Reagen just sucked. The data from his presidency does not support the hero that some claim him to be.
I am achin' for that middle-class tax cut. =)
HH
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