Last night in the audience while President Obama gave his State of the Union address, Daniel Hernandez, instant hero of the Tucson attack, sat listening. Tonight as I sit here peacefully reflecting on the president’s words, I am cheered to think that a twenty year old “college kid” whose name was unknown to the general public before the day of the incident has been catapulted to glory. I see a bright future for this young man.

While I enjoyed hearing (some) of the speech, I did leave the room for about twenty minutes to go do something else. The ambiance of the Congressional hall was not as bad as last year, with the shout of “You Lie!,” and our view of so many sullen faces of representatives who remained seated while others rose to their feet in support of various statements. I am sure that my say-so means nothing but I believe it would be an improvement if people in attendance would all remain seated throughout the talk and not waste time jumping up and down, and calling attention to the naysayers.

When the president first mentioned the term “Progressives,” I had to turn to Jim to ask for a translation. This must be new terminology or else I haven’t been keeping up. I think the word is an improvement over “uber-leftist Liberal Commie Fascists who kill babies, are destroying this country, have spent us into the poor house, Creeps.” (My quotation marks).

It is amazing how two people can hear the same speech and take something different away from it. After one of the Republican rebuttals, some of the commentators, as well as I, were shaking our heads in disbelief. I think one of them said, “What planet is she from?”

I liked some of what the president said but not all. The wind turbines kill birds and to me, that is not cool. The idea of an expanded railway system seems like a great idea. We can all find things to complain about in America but the truth of the matter is this: we are allowed to whine. We are even allowed to criticize the government. We are NOT allowed to bully, lie or shoot other people in the head because they don’t agree with us.

A better camaraderie seemed to be present in the hall. The fact that Republicans and Democrats crossed the aisle to sit together for one night reminded me of the truces that happened during World War I when the soldiers stopped their fighting for awhile to share cigarettes, a soccer game, food, and sing Christmas carols. After the generals got wind of these actions, the men were reminded not to fraternize with the enemy. It is more difficult to kill a friend in the name of any ideal.

We could take lessons from the past, but humans being humans, we usually just repeat the same mistakes again and again. Yet, after hearing the president’s upbeat message, I am hopeful. Let’s lay down the sword, once and for all.

Patricia Cummings

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 12:46 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.