Inauguration - OUR celebration

Recently, our country witnessed the 57th Inauguration of the President of the United States. The important word in that sentence is, "our."  WE did this - our country, the people of the United States witnessed it. The crowd at the recent inauguration was estimated to be between 800,000 to a million people! No, they weren't all Democrats, but they are Americans.

For that one day, we should celebrate the day as OUR day, the day we demonstrate our unity to the rest of the world. This time, we didn't have a transition of power from one person to another. But even if we had, it wouldn't have been any different. We don't have fights - we have balls and parties, lots of them! It was a huge social night for the area, for people in all parties.

In some countries, change of power is only as a result of anarchy or other stressful moments. In other countries, it is the result of the death of the leader with his or her heir taking the throne. Yet, here, we can actually have elections, and more or less smoothly, elect someone to be the president. No one has to be killed or thrown out of office. While Americans take it for granted, there are people in other parts of the world that envy this.

But the sad thing is, too many people saw it as a "they" moment, not a "we" moment.  Despite winning the election by getting not only most popular votes, but also the most electoral college votes, there are bitter people that won't let it go. They refuse to respect President Obama. It is sad to have such sour grapes, but it doesn't surprise me. This past election was marred by some very outlandish claims spread around social media by anti-Obama people. Seriously crazy "facts" that were easily proven false were spread around by otherwise  intelligent people. A friend of mine told me that she was previously undecided, but seeing the wild stories that were passed around, persuaded her that they were just being ridiculous and she voted for Obama. Sadly, some people actually believed these stories and STILL pass them around!

In elections, there will be winners and losers, usually more losers than winners. I've been on both sides - in the past 4 presidential elections, the person I voted for only won once. The ability to disagree on issues and discuss them calmly is one of the good things about being a citizen here. Simply disagreeing with someone has NEVER caused me to dislike them.  (I can't say the same thing for people that spread malicious lies though - I grew to dislike a few people that weren't close friends in the first place, over that.) The ability to openly disagree with government is one of our cherished freedoms and I hope it never changes.  But having a right to disagree is not the same as being rude, disrespectful, or spreading lies.

We should all respect the person that is OUR president, if we like him or not - respect the office he holds, at least!  Doing less reflects as poorly on the people as it does him.  Sadly, a day that should have been a celebration of the American way of government was a day of division.and complaining. Rather than talking about how well the National Anthem sounded, they complained that she lip-sang her own singing! Complaining about silly things like dresses worn, and worst, political posturing was quite evident. It was a day to celebrate, so it is sad that people couldn't put aside their differences for only 24 hours.