The Best Thing About Inauguration Day 2009

The best thing about Inauguration Day 2009 is ... I went to work. The traffic lights all functioned. The other drivers were courteous. There were no blazing tire fires on the sides of the road. No barricades. Besides work matters, people in the office discussed their holiday weekend and their favorite television shows. And that's how it should be.

The best part about Inauguration Day is seeing a parade of High School bands instead of tanks in the streets of Washington, D.C. It does the soul good to know the people standing on the sidewalks are waving flags and not throwing Molotov cocktails. The best thing about Inauguration Day is it was a peaceful transition of power.

Now, I don't want to detract from those who made the pilgrimage to D.C. to participate in the festivities. Attending the event is a perfectly acceptable choice. Some feel it was a historic event. Some just happened to be near by. Others have been unable to orgasm in the intervening months since election night and needed some release. Who am I to judge? That's the great thing about Inauguration Day. We can all celebrate in our own, peaceful way.

Even now, in the twenty-first century, dictatorships and despots still rule much of our globe. Just yesterday, Taliban wackjobs fundamentalist bombed five schools in Pakistan¹ because they think educating girls is a sin crime. A peaceful transition of government is almost something rare. One that is mandated by the will of the populous through their uninhibited vote, is something rarer still.

Whether you relished Obama's inauguration speech or took snide pot-shots at it, is unimportant. That you had the freedom to do either or neither is. I had the freedom to work in peace and safety. I didn't have to take up arms. I didn't have to hide my family in the basement. I didn't have to stare down tanks and shoot guerrillas. My most difficult decision was where to have lunch because all the restaurants were open. I chose a burger at my desk so I could listen to the speech on my computer. Then I went back to my daily routine, safe in the knowledge that bombs would not fall on the building. Not because of the speech, but because of our Constitution, every citizen who defends it, and those who participate in the process.

Some of the world hates the United States of America, but most of the world just envies the fact that we can sleep in peace tonight. When you climb into bed tonight, think about those poor Canadian children in war-torn Québec² who are going to bed hungry and frightened. The best part about Inauguration Day 2009 is ... this isn't Canada.

¹School bombings in Pakistan, AP
²Québec is not really war-torn, it just looks that way to those snobs in Ontario.