Can You Spare Some Change?

I attended a live theater screening of the Obama inauguration--a thrilling moment in US history--the Statue of Liberty nation now mature enough to elect a black man. 

The audience was full of ecstatic, transported progressives, many of them my friends, who had voted for "hope and change" and the end to wars of aggression.  

In the (s)election, however, I'd opted for a Ron Paul write-in, likely never counted.

I, too, had marched against the launch of the Iraq war, and had stood felt-lined-booted in snow drifts for weekly Peace Vigil. Held aloft pithy placards dissing Bush malignancies--with Quakers, Buddhists, Episcopalians, agnostics. 

A small huddled community meme up against a media imprimatur of terror-repetitions and patriotism. 

A guy showed up every week across the street with much red, white and blue, and contempt for peace-wusses. "Support Our Troops" his signs read. 

Quaker, etc. echo: "Yes, Support Our Troops; Bring Them Home." 

The telecast theater of inauguration, on a cold January day, began with the emergence of underlings onto the platform, the winning team coalescing. 

Obama's first appointee, Rahm Emanuel, emerged like a victor, glad-handing and gloating, a fellow product of the Chicago political machine.

Chicago-Obama, pre-occupied with gravitas, gave the country the repetition of "hope" and the relief of oratory skills. After the global embarrassment of Bush, a candidate's ability to form complete sentences was itself celebrated.

Rahm Emanuel's strutting cock-o'-the-morn had seemed to set the carnival-barker undertone, the P.T. Barnum verity: 

"There's a fool born every minute." 

I watched Obama's slick NLP crowd-manipulation--and the oddly docile mass of spectators--and felt ill with apprehension.

Buddy, can you spare some change?