January 23, 2009This week has come and gone just as quickly as any other. And suddenly, President George W. Bush is now a former president, and we have a new leader in President Barack Hussein Obama.
It should be apparent by now that I am not a very courageous person, insofar as stating my true thoughts on Obama is concerned. Coming up with a steady diet of "liberals hate America," "liberalism is a mental disorder," "liberals are Godless," etc., for some reason it is really hard to just come right out and say the dreadful words, "I believe in Barack Obama." And I don't even consider myself a liberal, let alone a democrat. Regardless, admitting to ultra-conservatives that you believe in Barack Obama is probably as blasphemous as denying the existence of a Supreme Creator. But I am coming to accept the way things are for me, and although it is really hard to describe, I am very optimistic about the future, in large part because of who our president is today.
As I watched the inauguration on Tuesday, I was filled with hope, with inspiration, with optimism. To me, Barack Obama symbolizes, in a variety of different ways, the goodness of the country of which I am a proud citizen.
For a short time, I was beginning to doubt that goodness. I watched the United States move along what looked to me like a slow, awful, unstoppable decline. (By way of clarification, in my opinion, this attitude had little to do with where Bush and conservatives took the country over the last eight years.) While the U.S.A. has innumerable problems, some of them very difficult, I have again reaffirmed, at least in my own mind, that what this country symbolizes, what this country stands for, for those of us who live here, and for many around the world, is simple goodness. And although it may be completely sickening to some critics of the new president, to me Barack Obama has made me believe in that simple truth once again.
I am proud of my country, and I'm proud to be and American. I am proud of President Barack Obama.
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