Messages From America

Remarkable times. Messages come in from friends across the United States. A Bostonian currently in Hawaii reports:

CNN is doing all it can to stress this a 'transformative moment', going as far as to say the conservative era, ushered in with Reagan 28 years ago, is over and now we have the beginning (of a) progressive era. Obama is visiting homeless shelters and other community activists in DC, people are delirious. We haven't seen anything like this since Kennedy, and even that isn't quite an accurate comparison.

Another one writing from Texas says:

I’m a natural skeptic — I’m wary of anything that has too much of a following. I am wary of anything that has the ability to move others blindly. But also, I am a believer of rhetoric and persuasion...

In voting for Obama — the incoming 44th — I cast hope toward my future and the future of our nation. I redesign my version of the concept of hope and give it my own context, one that is unsure of the future, incapable of committing to the unknown, but willing to allow the unknown to occur beside me.

Two people of many urged to express their connection to the moment with the world.

Obama's inaugural speech was full of the soaring rhetoric that he has become characterised by and which only an American president could get away with. After the abject horrors of the past eight years, it was also very, very welcome in most corners of the globe. Go here for the full version or check the Wordle cloud below for a visual synopsis (courtesy of the BBC).


One last comment. Ever since election night 2000, things have been pretty tough going here on Planet Earth (as if they hadn't been before then).

So long Junior - you ain't gonna be missed. Man, have we all waited a long time to see the back of you!