Barack Obama`s inaugural speech is already past. Throughout the past years, throughout the times I have been interested in politics and common interests rather than just my own little world, ever since I have realized that simple minded egoism is the manifesto of stupidity, I have never heard a better speech.
I listened to Martin Luther King`s "I Have A Dream" speech a couple of days ago. It`s a speech students of English and American culture listen to for various reasons. As a student, I had to listen to it years ago already. There is however a quality in it that keeps drawing me back to it, that keeps me, even though I have never felt segregation or even slightly suffered any disadvantages in my life except those self inflicted draws my heart to it. In it shines a hope and inspiring belief in the world and every single man`s and woman`s possibilities if only stupidity and cynism can be overcome.
Barack Obama`s speech he held as 44th president of the US is one that`s carven out of the same wood. It was full of determination, of power and intelligence. There are a few amazing speeches in the history of mankind and listening to them makes you shiver in a way. In some cases, the shivering just means that you acknowledge the quality of the speech but in the same way realize the demonic mind behind it, as it`s the case with Goebbels`s speech of 1944 in which he proclaimed total war. In other cases, the shivering means something much more positive: emotional connection on account of agreement. This is the case with Barack Obama`s speech.
I have listened to it a couple of times now and somehow I wish I could have been there. Somehow I wish to have been a member of those witnessing that moment. I have a feeling deep inside that it might be a historic moment. Even though it was just another 20 minutes that passed physically speaking exactly as fast or slow as those I spent waiting for my train yesterday, the feel historic. They have a quality I can only paraphrase, in a hundred years from now on, children might get taught that in a time of global crisis a man made a historic speech, setting out an agenda for what terms itself the free world.
Barack Obama is a young man, compared to many politicians. Yet is it a stereotype to think that wisdom comes with age, the abilitiy to see things clearly is not dependent on age. After eight lost years under the Bush presidency, after Guantanamo, water boarding, Abu Ghoreib and the Kyoto accord disaster, after eight years in which is was pretty easy to have faith in your political leaders as long as you considered the poor Americans and the fool they suffered from, the US finally have a president with charisma and intelligence again.
A message has been sent. If the world hears it and responds in an according way, it could be that 20 minutes make it a better place.
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