[quote]tedro wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Maybe you’re right. Although as I recall Colin Powell generated quite a bit of excitement, too, didn’t he?
Colin Powell isn’t exactly conservative.
Obama’s very easy on the eye, which generates emotion as well. But does it really matter?
Of course it matters. Why then is this inauguration such a huge event? Is it because it shows that there is no longer a racial barrier to becoming POTUS, or is it because we have elected the most leftist president in history who happens to be a minority?
It’s widely believed Powell could have been elected president should he have chose to run in 2000. Also, the simple fact that Obama won the democratic primary and proved to be a viable candidate in the general elections should have been more that enough to show that this racial barrier was no longer present.
Of course, there is a difference between showing in theory that a black man can become president and actually inaugruating one, but this takes me back to my original point that emotions would not have been the same if a black conservative, such as Alan Keyes, was elected.
Thus, one can only logically conclude that the basis of these emotions is not simply that a black man has taken office, but instead is that the most liberal president ever and all of his associated socialist policies that happens to also be black has been elected.
I am not moved in the least to find so many Americans getting emotional over the election of one with such views.
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I’m not sure how you “logically conclude” anything, since you have no way of knowing how anyone would have reacted to the nomination or inauguration of someone like Alan Keyes.
That formerly disenfranchised people believe that this inauguration ushers in a new era of belonging makes the moment an important one. The belief itself is important for its own sake. Sometimes emotions are widespread enough that they matter in and of themselves. Economic panic, for example, matters in and of itself, whatever its basis, because it has the power to effect real change in the markets.
This is another example of emotion being a matter of historic and global significance.
