Inauguration Day Remix

It feels like déjà vu! This inauguration felt like our President was just nominated again and that we all forgot the last 4 years. Also, his speech was like a State of the Union address, combined with the soaring rhetoric we have heard in the past meant to uplift the down-trodden and disenfranchised. It said nothing about his vision for the next four years, except for the generalizations of the past, like “we must respond to the threat of climate change and preserve the planet from these disastrous droughts, fires, and storms”. I thought that God played a major part in this! Current climate catastrophies can’t compare to the climate disasters of biblical times, the dust bowl in the U.S. of the 20’s, the hurricanes of the 50’s, and the major earthquakes of San Francisco and Galveston at the turn of the century.

The speech immediately jumps to the Declaration of Independence and says nothing about the Constitution, which he basically ignores in the way he governs. His opening paragraph is fraught with racial, class, and gender overtones; such as, we should not be separated “by the origin of our names (Obama?), color of our skin, or be a country where a few do well and many can’t make it". "We can’t be stymied by wars born by the lash and the sword”. Sounds like he reverts back to slavery and the Civil War here!

“We can’t be a nation where freedom is reserved for the lucky and happiness for the few, and where preserving peace requires perpetual war”. In another line he says, "we can’t be complete until our wives and daughters and gay brothers and sisters have equal pay and jobs". At the end he builds to a crescendo and starts to sound like MLK in a black church in Selma in the 60’s. “We must seize the moment and answer the call of history”. Just a few days ago his White House answered the call and issued a statement saying that this is the moment of opportunity but the Republicans are “not worthy of the moment”, and that’s why we can’t get anything done. In this speech Obama says “name-calling should not take the place of reasonable debate”. I guess he forgot how he demonized his opponent as a wife murderer, tax evader, corporate job exporter, and a corporate raider that bankrupts companies for his own personal gain. Selective memory or feigned amnesia is one of Obama’s greatest traits.

I now make an oath to you that I will stop bashing this guy, because we all know what we have and you are bored reading this stuff. Today we celebrate our system of government and the process by which we inaugurate Presidents. I was proud of the Brooklyn (my hometown) Tabernacle Choir, who stopped the show with “His Truth is Marching On”, and I must say Beyonce is no Whitney Houston, when it comes to the “Star Spangled Banner”.

I only wish that this President could speak to all Americans, not just lecture us as if we are a Third World country. Believe me, being poor in America is like the middle class in the rest of the world. We accomplished great things before he was elected and we will continue to long after he is gone from office.