Visions, Dreams and History: Barack Obama’s Second Inauguration,Louise Annarino,1-23-2013
We each use different words to describe singular events.Like the optical illusion in which some see an old woman with a large nose,and others see a young woman,we see more than a single meaning in President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.This one matters most to me.
When I read DREAMS OF MY FATHER, just written by someone unknown to me named Barack Obama,my first thought was that this man could be our first African-American president, and a great American leader. From that moment I have watched him grow into both roles.
He is someone future generations of Americans will appreciate far beyond what we do today. As I listened to his second inaugural address I heard our history transformed into one closer to the truth. His words cut closer to the bone than anyone had expected. It was thrilling to watch him weave a tapestry of the development of our greatest ideals of “life,liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from our Declaration of Independence,through a civil war, and into a civil rights movement which continues to create a more perfect union. He joins a clear line from George Washington and John Adams to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King,Jr. There is a greatness and a challenge in President Barack Obama’s words which transform the American story, and opens our eyes to its great truths.
Liberals and conservatives alike are dissatisfied when they cannot construe Barack Obama’s efforts in a manner which serves their world view. Visionaries, like prophets of old, are often unwelcome in their own lands. To appreciate who they are we must stand outside the mundane boxes of our own making, and peer at them from afar. Only then, from the distance of time, do we fully appreciate the transformative process such leaders of men put in place.Those unwilling to make such a journey of the mind and heart will find my view an overblown adulation of a flawed man. I see the flaws but greatness makes them fade from view,allowing us to focus on what is truly important; i.e. we are a nation of the people,by the people, and for the people. Generations to come always deify those we vilified while visionaries challenged the status quo..
The British government put a price on the head of traitor to the king George Washington, and other founding patriots. He could have been hung. Attorney and patriot John Adams, who believed every person is entitled to a legal defense, was vilified and threatened for defending eight of the kings soldiers, six successfully, who shot to defend themselves against a mob in an event called the Boston Massacre. Abraham Lincoln was one of the most hated men in the nation by many in slave and non-slave states alike,who disapproved of his political maneuvering around the issue of slavery. Teddy Roosevelt was vilified for the obscene “dinner that shocked a nation” in which ex-slave Booker T. Washington ate with the president and his family at the White House. http://historynotebook.blogspot.com/2008/11/booker-t-washingtons-white-house-dinner.html He was no less hated by westerners for developing a national park system and protecting huge swaths of land against private development. Despite pulling the nation free of an economic depression,and successfully prosecuting a war, destroying the threat to human lives by fascism and anti-Semitism,and forging a peace which made friends of our former enemies Franklin D. Roosevelt was vilified and attacked. Peaceful civil disobedience proponent and civil rights leader Martin Luther King,Jr. was hounded by the F.B.I. as a socialist/communist provocateur. He found his life threatened at every turn by white fear and loathing. Creation of a holiday in his honor brought renewed political opposition to his legacy.
Today, we forget the vilification of those we now call heroes,patriots,icons of American democracy;those who fought inch by perilous inch through a sea of hate and disdain, to create a more perfect union of the United States of America. Obama’s second inaugural speech will be remembered long after the snide comments of political pundits, and the short-sighted praise of his friends. It established a true rendering of the issues and events marking the era in which he served as the nation’s president. Our gret-grandchildren will know him,and us, by this speech. For myself and for generations to come, I now thank him.
You can view the entire text and video of President Obama’s speech at this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/obama_inauguration/7840646.stm
annarino writes 