an Answer to the Obama Inaguaration

It’s tempting to be cynical,

knowing history can make you that way because history focuses mainly on the dramatic, the eventful. Not the positive steady growth but the incident, the assassination, the war, the corruption and oppression –and the downfall (praised by some as the beginning of a new chapter, a light, but for most suffering)

A new light:

Barack Hussein Obama told us not to be afraid, to loom forward with pride –and hope. To be the change you want to see. Are they just words?

A cynic would say “Of course.”

But aren’t they the words you want to hear? Aren’t they the words you want from the leader? Aren't they what we all say we have been waiting for?

What more do we ask? (A leader who inspires hope)

Our cynicism, our skeptical brains should keep us challenging, using our anger to ensure the better –in ourselves, our friends and family, our society and our leaders.

IT SHOULD NOT

Keep us from being the change we believe in, or mocking the voice we want to hear, or sitting in doubt on the sidelines while at the very least marginal change occurs.

-Will anything be different?

I worry about climate change. The disruption of food and water, the medicine held back by patent laws and greed (though funded with our tax dollars).

I worry about the year of tax burden every single one of us owes on our deficit. The handouts to the rich who claim a single mother is a burden to our society while they waste a grand on shoes or a purse.

I worry about starvation –the ever present threat of war and the billion who see it in their day to day lives.

-but “Will anything be different?” (It’s about time we find out)

I mean if every cell phone at the mall has a camera and the capability to call that starving child a half a world away, then we should be able to ship him some food, or open our borders.

If every Sarah America can be the next best seller at the book store, then we will soon hear the voices of the disenfranchised, and then, when we recognize them as our neighbors, our family…

We wont fence them off or imprison them… we’ll sing together.

My satellite dish and cable TV sends me information about the customs of a people I never knew existed

-their history is now caught up in mine. How can I resist them?

Now even the poor can be educated – “will anything be different?.... oh man it already is.

Our voices stream together at high speeds on the Internet and even though the Big Stone Coal Power Plant provides the energy the plans for 1000 homemade solar panels and wind turbines are its legacy.

Do we throw it all down on technology? NO

We invest in each other. We invest responsibly in ourselves, you and me, not Mr CEO of GM or GE

And then we raise our cynical voices to oppose the injustice

And when we raise our songs for praise

What a world we’d realize we life in

What a world we’d be able to create.

Wrote this in class on inauguration day, we were responding to some prompt questions. I assumed many of my students wouldn't take the event as a positive sign of things... so I tried to inspire some hope.