Inauguration!!

[oyceter]

I am still jetlagged beyond belief (I swear, I haven't been this jetlagged for a long time) and classes are starting and my act is so not together and my brain has exploded a billion times yesterday reading comments on the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, part Umptymillion and I have complicated feelings about the rhetoric of the USA and the (US of) American dream thanks to finishing Octavian Nothing 2 a few days earlier and my own personal issues about nationality and belonging and I still have my own doubts and there is the economy and all, but.

But.

Oh people, I did not think I would ever see this in my lifetime.

And I should write more to counter the massive word-splooge of doubt and fear and hesitation, because oh, so much of that is because I am afraid still of what will come and what our new President has to see us through and I am afraid of being part of that "us." But.

I feel as though a long nightmare is over, and the dawn is breaking.

Comments

[jadelennox]

part of my brain says "he's just a man, and an imperfect man at that, in a system that relies on corruption for its very functioning, and he's a hawkish centrist capitalist and doesn't really represent me."

The other part of my brain -- the one which is in charge today -- doesn't care about any of that. Even if he weren't smart and driven and all of the good things about him (believes in science!), I believe in symbols, and in what those symbols represent. And what this symbol represents is so wonderful. Doris Kearns Goodwin on MSNBC can kiss my ass when she talks about the end of racism, but that doesn't mean something wonderful hasn't just happened.

[oyceter]

I know! I just.. OMG. Looking at pictures of the extended First Family made me tear up. There are people who look like me in there!