Obama's First Day in Office

Many of us are in love with the new first family for its style and today we learn we can love them for their substance. In the NYT, I found an article about how Obama will keep promises made during the campaign. On the second day in office, Obama is to finally issue another set of executive orders meant to close down the network of prisons the CIA has because they are not part of the system of laws which USAmericans hold as the ideal.

So many ideas come to mind that remain a jumble. One of my first thoughts concerns my questioning of how this country came to have agencies that could flout US laws with such ease. It is no wonder that some of us perceive an illness which has rotted our moral fiber. Preaching to others how to behave while acting in perverse unlawful ways led to the decline in US standing in the world.

However, that is not the topic I wish to address. What I want to express and ponder over for the coming days is my and I imagine others' identification with our new President of the United States.

Yes he speaks well; yes he is handsome, yes he has charm and great intellect and other skills. I suppose for some of us Obama has come to represent a second coming of JFK. I identify with him because of his self-deprecating comments that he is a mutt. I've felt the same way about myself despite the fact that my parents were from the same country and same general background. My connection to being a mutt goes back to old identity issues which return every now and then. I am a woman, I am short, I am USAmerican, I come from Puerto Rican parents and thus have Puerto Rican roots, I am in part a New Yorker but I am a California woman too. I belong everywhere and yet I belong nowhere. I fit in and still remain on the margins. These realities make me and I presume make Mr. Obama a most complex person. I say this with an appreciation of the good things that the complexity gives to our new President.

May his term succeed and may all of us come to appreciate the "mutt" in all of us.

Comments

Popular Posts