The Religion of Common Sense

I've been following our new president since he took office (not literally, calm down CIA and point your satellites elsewhere) and it seems I grow more impressed each day. It's like he's held a mirror to our country's problems and is vocalizing everything we've either been screaming or silently cringing in disgust over for years. It's like he crawled inside my head because he seems to want to fix everything I think is broken about this nation and he is saying just the right things. In fact it seems every time he opens his mouth his words are sweet music to my ears. But maybe that's just because he's been paying attention these last 8 years, heck 50 years even, and has some damn common sense in his head. Something the last administration had in short supply.

I tell you, I have more faith in this country every day. I'll admit I was feeling very, well... the only word I can think of to aptly describe my view of this country is "nausea". Not just because of its problems, which are many, but because of the fact that I didn't feel I had a right to be unhappy with the status quo. Over the last 8 years I've been shocked into near mortal fear and submission and told the world is basically ending, then told by those same bullies that everything is okay when I try to speak up - which is akin to being slapped whilst being told I'm not being slapped. And when that doesn't pacify me I'm essentially told "Shut up and eat this with your vegetables young lady because it's good for you. You're going to swallow it and you're going to like it because I said so". At least to me that seemed to be the tone set by the powers-that-be. "Dissenters" have been villainized as unpatriotic liberal loonies. There are people out there who genuinely love this country and only want to make it better, who are symbolically burnt at the stake for having differing views. Make no mistake, if these were more barbaric times we lived in, if it didn't "look bad" to do so, there would be a political crusades and people WOULD have been burnt at the stake.

Even though the witch hunters didn't wait very long after the inauguration to start painting Obama as a 'heretic' (essentially for rejecting the 'Bush Doctrine' right?) I couldn't care less because he has the power to make positive change and I feel confident he is going to use it. He's not afraid to declare "You're not imagining things people, the system IS broken and we ARE going to fix it." He stands up for the little people in the face of corporate greed and worse and I'm starting to see why so many people see him as a 'super hero' of sorts. I won't ridicule them or begrudge them the worshipping of their 'savior', this world could using a little saving right now and we all deserve some optimism and hope. Amen.