As a follow up to Booman’s post from yesterday late morning, this is what I have been feeling, hearing, reading….
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Just reading and hearing and seeing the change in people’s overall attitude – here in the US and just as importantly abroad – in the past 48 hours has been simply amazing. Except for an incredibly small, unimportant and quite honestly, laughable minority trying desperately to sound relevant, the mood has changed pretty drastically. Which is so important as much of the machine that put the republican Party in power recently is the divisive, petty crap that, quite frankly, got us all into this mess we are now in.
We can finally exhale.
We are on the road to respectability around the world. Our President personally reached out to different parties in the Middle East, is ready to sign Executive Orders reversing some of the worst policies of the last 8 years, completely eviscerated the entire premise of the Bush administration in his Inaugural Address and put a freeze on the eleventh hour Bush regulations.
In his first day.
Even though I wasn’t his biggest supporter (and many of you know), his biggest quality to me was that he was able to make people believe that they can make a difference, and how he could motivate people to get involved. Which is precisely what is needed now.
We can now be taken seriously in worldwide matters. Our views will instantly have infinitely more credibility. And we are instantly in a better bargaining position than two days ago, two weeks ago, two months ago or two years ago.
Sure, the economy still sucks, unemployment is through the roof, we are still in Iraq and there are urgent things that need to be dealt with regarding healthcare, the environment, education and infrastructure. But at least we can now try and do something that is serious about it as opposed to using it as an excuse to funnel more money to wealthy corrupt cronies.
In foreign policy matters, countries around the world and in domestic matters, people here in the US didn’t want to do anything for Bush because he didn’t really care about doing anything for them. Same for Cheney, for that matter. People want to help themselves and as we have seen since November, seem to think that they may finally have a chance to make things a little better for themselves and their children.
I certainly feel that way about my son now.
And after reading, watching and seeing all that I have over the past few days, it’s like we are getting a do-over.