History and the Human Race

So... what did y'all think of the inauguration speech? How about the over-all tone of the day?

Personally, I thought the speech was good, very good, but the 'Yes We Can' speech was better. Although, I'm thoroughly impressed that Obama was able to condemn the past administration and absolve them by putting the weight of the economic crisis squarely on the shoulders of the American public, all in one sentence. And I'm not saying he's wrong. Actually, I think he's right.

It's like that old line that your mother used to tell you... "and if your friends all jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?" I mean just because mortgages were easier to come by than discarded pennies on the street didn't mean that every one of us should have picked them up. Some of y'all knew damn good and well when you were crunching the numbers, that your guts were telling you not to do this. Some of you knew that one false move in the workplace, and the bricks were gonna fall on your head... and yet, you bought anyway. Swept up in the Bush-iness and greed of the then mindset.

And I'm not trying to be insensitive about people loosing their homes ~ I have been there. Actually, yes, I have. I have lost my home. We managed to sell it one day shy of foreclosure... on paper, I guess that looks better, but bottom line, we lost the house. I have been where many are now... credit in the toilet, barely able to scrape your family into an apartment, after busting your ass to make a beautiful place to live for your children to grow up in. Desperate, disillusioned, and wild-eyed with every day feeling like Atlas suckered you into holding the world for him while he went out for coffee ~ and never came back.

This is how I know that Obama was right in putting some of the blame on American citizens and not crucifying only W. and his regime for tanking the economy. Even if he fucked-up ~ a lot ~ by running this country like a good ole boys club in order to carry out his own destructive agenda and line his and his buddy's pockets doing it. We still followed right along like lemmings.

And, not for nothing, but does anyone else think that Cheney really did pull his back out by lugging boxes during the move... I sure do! He wouldn't trust anyone else to move all those box loads of incriminating evidence against him, that's how the dumb asses get caught, don'tcha know.

And now on to Obama and the crowds... So, this is probably gonna get me knocked-off, or at the very least a whole lotta hate mail, cause I'm totally as white a white girl as white girls get without being albinos; but can people lay off the race card... with Obama, and in general?

He's a black man, actually he's a half-black man, half-white man. Still, the significance is not lost on me. I understand the monumentally historic life-as-we-knew-it-is-over-and-I-mean-that-as-a-really-really-good-thing significance of this man being rightfully elected (unlike W.) by the American citizenry. However, we elected him because we felt he was the best man for the job, not the best African-American man for the job.

I am not oblivious to the bigotry, the acceptable-in-certain-company jokes, the deep history of the African-American people. I really am not. But take a clue from the man himself. Obama didn't harp on the race card. WE should not harp on the race card. By continually bringing up race, we are keeping in the forefront of our view what should have been discarded so long ago. We have cultural differences. We have different ancestry. So do the Irish, the Chinese, the Spanish and every other race, creed, religion and culture in America. Please, stop self-segregating. Obama did not say he would do his job as president as a proud black man, just as Joe Biden didn't say that he would do his job as vice-president as a proud white man.

Because the bottom line is, we are all ONE RACE ~ The HUMAN RACE.

We all have to live on this planet. We all have to work like dogs to make ends meet. We all have to raise children that will one day be the adults running this country. We all have bones and blood and lungs and hearts and brains and finger nails. We just come in different packaging. I used to tell my daughter that the reason that people look different is because God wanted to have all kinds of different gift-wraps to look at, and marvel at, and enjoy under his Christmas tree. Because inside, he knew that all the packages were the same. But a Christmas tree would be very boring indeed if every single package underneath it were wrapped exactly the same.

I got the sense that Obama, as proud as he is of, and as much as he is mindful of ~ his history and his culture, is determined to look beyond it in order to come together in a peaceful community-union with all the other cultures and histories around the world.

With the explosion of the Internet, it's no longer Japanese people are in Japan, and Australians are in Australia, and Iranians are in Iran, and Germans are in Germany... We are all on the web, standing side by side as neighbors and customers and suppliers of each other's products. We read each other's blogs. We become Facebook friends. We listen to each other's music and view each other's photo albums. The world, as Obama said, has shrunk. It has shrunk to include every one from every nation on Earth.

Isn't it time we were all just PEOPLE.