Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go…

18Jan09

I wanna be sedated
Nothin’ to do and no where to go-o-oh
I wanna be sedated
Just get me to the airport put me on a plane

I can’t control my fingers I can’t control my brain
Oh no no no no no

I’m a little excited. This song has been running through my head all day and I’m bopping around like little bunny foo-foo. It’s less than 24 hours now.

The funny thing is, I’m about 0% interested in the Inaugural festivities, save for casual interest in Michelle Obama’s inaugural dress (ok, it’s more like fascination with these fashion sketches– they’re apolitical catnip for my foolish girl heart.)

I certainly don’t expect anything to be instantly different after a ceremony, either. What I’m excited about is the end of this excruciating limbo period between Nov. 4th and now.

I got to be there, in Grant Park, on Election Night. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Hundreds of thousands of happy people, pouring through the streets. A well-behaved mob. And afterwards, the city sparkled with excitement for weeks. With the transition team here, even traffic jams were tolerated patiently as long as they were caused by the Obama security motorcade.

But it’s been a long, long few months. I’m done celebrating and ready to get a move on.

Obama Banner on The Hideout, by Kristiecat

And I do have hope. You have be either not really paying attention, or extremely, extremely cynical to think this whole movement is a marketing trick, or that ‘inspiration’ is empty. If you aren’t paying attention, give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised to find real intellect and deep understanding of policy, emotional sophistication that comes from real ethical precepts, and bonus dry humor behind the slogans.

If you are extremely cynical then admit to yourself that cynicism is a lazy excuse not to participate. It’s status quo to be cynical about politics, and that sort of blanket reaction is much more naive than hope ever was.

Is it naive to speak in big, general principles? Or is it kind of nice to be reminded of those general principles? To use equality, liberty, justice and opportunity for all as real goals that we develop policy to attain? That it’s not Government vs. The Individual, but both. E Pluribus Unum.

It’s useful to remind ourselves, then, that out free market system is the result neither of natural law nor of Divine Providence. Rather it emerged through a painful process of trial and error, a series of difficult choices between efficiency and fairness, stability and change. And although the benefits of our free market system are mostly derived from the individual efforts of generations of men and women pursuing their own vision of happiness, in each and every period of great economic upheaval and transistion we depended on government action t open up opportunity, encourage competition, and make the market work better…and we can be guided throughout by Lincoln’s simple maxim: that we will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do as well, or at all, individually or privately.”

–Barack Obama

Filed under: Foolish Girl Heart, Loving a Woman With a Broken Nose, Purloined Words, Subjects Large and General   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Obama, Inaugaration, Michelle Obama's dress, cynicism, election night, Lincoln, quotes, Ramones, hurry