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Inauguration Thoughts
Jan. 20th, 2009 10:06 amInauguration is a very necessary formality. Transition of power has to have definite start and end points. I understand this.
That said, I consider the whole ceremony to be about as relevant as the opening and closing ceremonies to the Olympics: that is, not at all. So no, I will not be helping to choke bandwidth to watch the actual thing happen.
I reached outrage fatigue very early in the Bush administration, especially as he ramped up the Federal budget faster than anyone in history, including FDR. Combine that with the modern Republican predilection to ignore basic human rights (now including privacy, which had once been a Republican touchstone), and we may well have just withstood the worst presidency in our history.
And that's without touching on the widespread incompetence, the botched handling of one war, the entrance into a completely unnecessary war (which prevented the necessary one from reaching its winning conditions), the cronyism that would have fit right in with the Ferdinand Marcos regime, and the poisoning of general debate to the point that real conservatives are now routinely dismissed as mindless zombies despite the well-constructed points they're making (and rejected by the phony neo-conservatives for being "off message").
I am looking forward to complaining about the Obama administration. I want to complain about implementation methods, economic empowerment, compounded bureaucracy, and fickle democracy. The stakes are still there, but much lower than the roughshod trampling we've exhausted ourselves fighting the last eight years.
[Edit:] Okay, I caved. They had some televisions on at work here, so I watched the actual oath of office and the speech. Great speech.
That said, I consider the whole ceremony to be about as relevant as the opening and closing ceremonies to the Olympics: that is, not at all. So no, I will not be helping to choke bandwidth to watch the actual thing happen.
I reached outrage fatigue very early in the Bush administration, especially as he ramped up the Federal budget faster than anyone in history, including FDR. Combine that with the modern Republican predilection to ignore basic human rights (now including privacy, which had once been a Republican touchstone), and we may well have just withstood the worst presidency in our history.
And that's without touching on the widespread incompetence, the botched handling of one war, the entrance into a completely unnecessary war (which prevented the necessary one from reaching its winning conditions), the cronyism that would have fit right in with the Ferdinand Marcos regime, and the poisoning of general debate to the point that real conservatives are now routinely dismissed as mindless zombies despite the well-constructed points they're making (and rejected by the phony neo-conservatives for being "off message").
I am looking forward to complaining about the Obama administration. I want to complain about implementation methods, economic empowerment, compounded bureaucracy, and fickle democracy. The stakes are still there, but much lower than the roughshod trampling we've exhausted ourselves fighting the last eight years.
[Edit:] Okay, I caved. They had some televisions on at work here, so I watched the actual oath of office and the speech. Great speech.
