Watching Obama's inaugral address, I believe the USA, as the only real global superpower, finally has a leader who is capable of being a leader the world needs, as well as the leader the USA needs.
Two things really moved me. I've lived in four different countries around the world, with very different cultures. So I feel pretty global in my outlook on life. So Obama's global viewpoint really strikes a chord. His global perspective, environmental awareness, respect for the role of both religion and science, clarity that the middle way is really the only way to bring people together, opposition to crude brute force , a stern clarity about the damage that greed and unrestrained market forces will bring to the world - all of this mirrors the experiences that my own evoution has led me who I am.
The second thing was that Obama clearly has crystal clear values. The USA is founded on inclusivity, crafted as a place of opportunity for those that wanted freedom of belief, religion, commerce and self-expression. As articulated by Obama, these values made me realize why I instinctively always wanted to experience living in the USA .
For the last eight years, we saw a massively corrupt Republican cabel cynically manipulate many of these values in order to justify political power and orchestrate the transfer of trillions of dollars in taxpayer wealth into the private fortunes of a narrow elite. Obama's message of new challenge, of creating a new country that improves on the old, of a 'more perfect union', these things speak to the timeless attraction of life in the US, rather than cynically created fear and war-based patriotism that the Bush white house cynically rammed down the throats of a vulnerable public after September 11, as part of their calculated campaign of theft of public money and misuse of power.
Obamas message, in contrast, articulates the the essence if freedom that US citizens so often feel deeply - but often fail to describe clearly. These values are much more clear when you move to the USA from another country where they are not as present. The USA is a land where people don't apologize for who they decide to be, where ideas can be tried on, spoken aloud, reconsidered and abandoned for better ones when you have grown beyond them. This is the attraction of living in this country, and through Obama's clarity of communication, I've leapt forward in understanding this.
He is a very much the consumate leader for our time, a leader for my generation of intelligent, discerning adults in their 30s and 40s who are sick of the hypocrisy and greed that so often characterised the powerful adults that supposedly served as our role models as we grew up. Instead these adults became the figures of our ridicule, digust and disillusionment.
We waited a long time for you Obama. Your time has come.
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