Words and deeds

So I thought I would be more inclined to write political screeds than I have been. There are already so many loudly held opinions of every variety it doesn't seem worth it.

Except today. And tomorrow, I expect.


I have had the distinct pleasure of voting for Barack H Obama four times now. He's spoken at my university and represented me in the Senate. I am not immune to the messianic fervor that surrounds him. I actually believe it a little.

On this side of the world, and I expect just about every where outside the USA, there is a buzz in the air. Like standing next to a van de Graaff generator just before it arcs. You can feel a bit of a tingle and you know that something beautiful and brilliant and awesome is about to happen.

With this in mind, I bring you the following excerpt from a speech we should all know well:

We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.

To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.

To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.

When we listen to "the better angels of our nature," we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things—such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.

Greatness comes in simple trappings.

The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.

To lower our voices would be a simple thing.

In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways—to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart—to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.

Those left behind, we will help to catch up.

For all of our people, we will set as our goal the decent order that makes progress possible and our lives secure.

As we reach toward our hopes, our task is to build on what has gone before—not turning away from the old, but turning toward the new.

In this past third of a century, government has passed more laws, spent more money, initiated more programs, than in all our previous history.

In pursuing our goals of full employment, better housing, excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas; in protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life—in all these and more, we will and must press urgently forward.

We shall plan now for the day when our wealth can be transferred from the destruction of war abroad to the urgent needs of our people at home.

So, BHO? NO! Richard F**ing Nixon, first inaugural address. A man who ran TWICE on an antiwar platform and pledged openness and reform in government.  How in the name of all that is good and decent can a man run on an antiwar platform in a reelection campaign?  As we have again had demonstrated over the last eight shameful, torturous, cognitively-dissonant years, we get the government we deserve.

Let's give our new president time and leeway, but let's not forget to hold him to his promise and his promises. Let's not accept a Nixonian Janus.  Let's not be happy with Clintonian nonfailure.  Let's demand the greatness we see is possible.

Ok. I'm putting the soapbox away for a bit.

Word of the day

Blij.  Happy.  We would be happy to see you.  Wij zouden blij om u te zien.  I learned this word after being told that gelukkig was a bit archaic, a bit like merry in english.  You might say ``Merry Christmas" or ``Gelukkig nieuwjaar" but you wouldn't be merry to see someone.