quotes to tickle thought: Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. (Tennyson, In Memorium)
I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind. (Shakespeare, Timon of Athens)
in the news on 31 December: US jobless claims drop to lowest level since 2008; US to lose $400 billion on Fannie, Freddy; dollar rises to three-month high as jobless claims drop; US stock futures up slightly after jobless data; cranky Cheney at it again (with criticism of Obama being soft on terrorism)
A failed Christmas day attempt at a terrorist attack on an airliner brought vitriole from former vice-president Dick Cheney. Throughout 2009 and the first 11 months of a world-friendly American administration after eight years of a world-alienating approach in response to the 9/11/01 attack on America, the new president has repeatedly acknowledged that America is at war against terrorist extremists.
Even so, the former vice-president of the previous administration blindly clung to his view that the new president was “pretending we are not at war.” His reasoning was that “war” did not fit with the view the new president had brought to the Oval Office, that of social transformation and the restructuring of American society.
However, social transformation and the restructuring of American society was precisely the mandate affirmed by the 2008 election that broke the global racial glass ceiling and put into office the first non-white leader of a western industrialized world. In the midst of a global economic crisis, that election bore out the wisdom of the American electorate at large.
The 2008 election proved that America was independent and the ultimate land of opportunity. It also proved that America was smart.
Throughout its history, America has grown to its current stature as hands-down world leader because of its hallmark trait of adaptability. That stature is based not just on economic and military might but also on social fabric and moral high-ground for basic values such as access to fairness and justice.
A solidly founded broad-based constitution was the basis for America’s growth. It allowed for amendments that in turn accommodated global shifts in the accordance and insurance of basic human rights to people as those concepts of justice evolved.
Thus over time, the wing of America’s compassionate protection spread to envelop not only slaves, women, minorities and participants in war, but to all in need of a champion as the world with its vast levels of standards for human standards of conduct met up, clashed and evolved. With some notable exceptions when American unilaterism outruled common sense, the spirit of America has been summed up by kindness, strength, flexibility, smarts, capability and a hand up for the underdog.
The spirit of grandness through generosity has been America’s trademark and continues to be through its new administration. By any measure it trumps the smallness of defensive cowering and preemptive schoolyard bullying of the preceding eight years that will be washed away by history.
On New Year’s eve 2009, America rings out the old decade of holding onto a vestigial vision of a white male macho monopoly on power in a global world, On that same night, it rings in a new decade of challenge for both the American people and its leaders.
To find direction, America has only to reflect on the changes it has made since a mere year earlier. At the turn of 2009 with America’s new leader less than a year in office, America can afford to let its former vice-president cry “the sky is falling!” in the vein of Chicken Little.
America can make room on its airwaves for that alarmist view because it is solidly on the right path under its new globally-savvy leader. At the turn of 2009 onto a new decade, America can afford to be generous with the world as it has been handed down to it by the previous administration because of the direction America chose with its 2008 election.
