The almost obligatory Obama post

I justify this intrusion into my A to Z as a post-script to my last entry.

Following the inauguration speech of the 44th president of the United States of America, I flipped through a few bits and pieces here and there to read about the rhetoric involved, because I tend to look at that stuff.

One point in particular caught my thoughts and my mood. This was a comment on the difference between the incoming and outgoing chappies in terms of approach to policy-making.

In Obama's speech, this took form in terms of choosing hope over fear. A recognition of hard times, but a positive mood towards making things better. We're in trouble but we can work together, get over it, and move forward.

The analysis contrasted this to the regime of George W, which, it argued, was defined by negatives and the fear factor; by can't and don't. We can't protect the environment because we'll wreck the economy. We can't maintain human rights because we'll be letting our enemies escape. We can't ... all sorts of things ... improve universal health care, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, or even count all the votes; we don't accept other points of view and we won't change our ideas.

Essentially, the plethora of can't and don't scenarios reads like the journal of a committed depressive, caught in a cycle of self-destruction.

As I posited under unknowingness, negative leads to negative. In the case of the no-longer-incumbent, this included a drift to an astonishingly low approval rating.

As an antidote, cut to another US presidential inauguration, rather longer ago, and "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Thank you, FDR. So it's time to live and learn once more. It's time to see what is light and what is right, and not waste a lifetime wallowing in self-pity and darkness.