My country tis of thee

I am not a cynic today.

I watched Obama with a catch in my throat, eyes welling up and for the first time in a long while felt connected to my homeland. For those twenty minutes that Obama spoke, I felt a thrilled by the promise of America, of immigrants toiling for a better life, people of all races, creeds and religions coming together.

Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote 'all men are created equal' in the Declaration of Independence, which underpins American political thought, of course owned some 200 human beings (he freed his slaves only after dying). This is the irony of the nation, espousing liberty in theory, but often not in practice for a large number of its citizens. Maybe with Obama, the US has finally reached its potential.

But that is a putting a lot on his slender shoulders: being the face of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic tolerant America, whilst having to rescue the economy, pull out of two intractable wars and reverse the unmitigated damage to civil liberties created by the cabal of cowboys and criminals who ran the country for the last eight years.

The rather sober speech reflected the challenge. Half 'ask not what you're country can do for you' and half 'only thing we have to fear'. You wonder how Americans will respond. We have lived off the fat of the land, become lazy, have been unencumbered by the need for sacrifice since the Second World War. It is human, not just American, nature to want someone else to do the work and suffering for you. Witness how climate change is being tackled with the buying of carbon credits by rich countries from the poor and the absolute nonsense of off-setting. Normally, I would despair that my fellow Americans would have it in them for the sacrifice and difficulties that lie ahead.

But I am not a cynic today. Today, I think Obama can change the world. And Aretha sang at the inauguration. How cool is that?