sunshine_queen | (no subject)

I'm a fairly unsentimental American. I'm usually proud to be a citizen of my country, but after years of culture immersion, and of spending my whole life in a city where you are more defined by where you're from rather than where you are, my ability to just be a happy, flag-waving American was... stunted, I guess. That and spending eight of my formative years under a president whose politics I despised, but anyway.

Everyone's been all psyched about the inauguration like it was THE epitome of everything that is currently awesome in the US, and I was mostly "meh" about it. If I caught it, cool, but if not, no big. So, today, I came home between classes and saw a post on ONTD about it, so I turned it on.

I missed him getting swore in, but I caught most of his speech. And it was just... it was not the kind of speech (for me, anyway) that elicited the kind of bell-ringing, parade-starting, crowds in Times Square kind of feeling, but instead it just... it sounds cliched, but it made me feel like there was hope, and that my country wasn't going to be seen as the faltering, vaguely idiotic grandchild of a great nation forever.

The other thing I've noticed is that the last few times I've heard the national anthem, I've teared up. I don't think I've done that- become swept up in patriotic fervor- since September 2001. Hearing La Marseillaise, that's more likely to get me emotionally caught up. But there I am, sitting in my apartment, watching Barack Obama- our new president- sing the national anthem with his wife, and I cried a bit. I'm actually proud of my country and my president, and I voted and I have faith in the system and yes, I know that his presidency is not going to be easy because the way things are right now, he's never going to live up to the hype that surrounds him- the second coming of Jesus, JFK and MLK all in one- but goddammit, I believe that the man can do good. And it's kind of amazing.