What Said the Man in the Storm

I’m literally as proud as it is possible to be.  Yesterday was a triumph of the American spirit over its darker demons.  One hundred and fifty years ago, one half of the country destroyed the other.  Fifty years ago the US was shattered by ideals above its own reach, and it convulsed in race riots for the distance that remained.  My parents in their youth witnessed a flowering, an effervescence, a ray of hope – and then Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr were assassinated, and the curtain descended.

So many struggled and suffered to bring this about, and it was thrilling to see that the civil rights movement that gave me my values marches on.  It reaffirmed my faith in America; for any country in the world to transfer its power so peacefully is a miracle in itself – especially when that power could destroy the world.  It reaffirms the American dream – that anyone can become anything.

We were attacked by radical Muslims, and warred with a Hussein; the slumbering conscience of American eventually responded by electing a Hussein.  

If that isn’t goodness, I do not know what is.  And in the speech he drew those good things to me, and made me remember my own history:  my grandfathers both gave their life in service, and one of them lays in the ground just across the Potomac from the Washington Monument and the Mall, in Arlington National Cemetery.  If I had been standing at his grave, I would have heard Obama’s words, and they would have honoured him.

I don’t know what else I can say.  There are moments when I am sceptical, of course, but yesterday was not a day for scepticism.  Yesterday was a day for appreciating the real magnitude of what we do in life, and being grateful for those who died to let us do it.