The Inauguration

Today I'm going to talk about the presidential inauguration. Let me first say that if I had a choice between watching that thing and not watching it, I would have chosen the latter. It is only because I was forced to, though, that I ended up doing the former. At school today they forced as many students as they could into the auditorium so we could all watch the inauguration. I wasn't at all interested since I'm not a follower of politics and I ended up sleeping through half of Obama's speech. Teachers said that the reason it was important for us to watch it is because "history was being made". I thought to myself, "okay, then leave the history to the historians and actually teach me something today instead of forcing me to watch as a hypocritical politician leaves office and a new hypocritical politician takes his place."

I also found it funny when people said "this is important! It's history!" Where's the logic in that? How can something be history if it's happening right now? Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? Here's an idea, if they want it to be such a historical event, why not just record it, and then give out DVD's of the inauguration to students on Friday so we can "watch" it over the weekend? That way we'll really be watching "history" since it will be something that happened before then! Oh, here's an even better idea! How about we just not implement political events into the curriculum altogether and actually learn something every single day?
Yeah, I know. What a crazy idea, right?

Anyways, on the subject of the Inauguration itself, I noticed something interesting about the crowd. There were at least 2 million people there. Many of which left their homes both near and far to stand in a crowded area where at least five people will be touching them at all times. Not only that, but it's also supposed to be very cold down in D.C. around this time. What's worse is that these people paid, that's right, paid to stand in these sardine-can like conditions. Why someone would want to pay cash to be uncomfortable for hours on end is beyond me. They could just watch the thing at home and be comfortable! Without wasting any money.

Also another thing that caught my attention was the praying sections. Am I the only one who noticed that the camera only focused on people who were praying? I smells propaganda. Also I really don't get this prayer thing. Is it really absolutely necessary to pray for 15 minutes at events like these? I'm sure that if there were any Christians in the crowd who actively practiced the faith on a daily basis, they'd have already prayed before they left for the inauguration and when they got there. So why is mass prayer necessary? I seriously don't think that Americans are incapable of praying on their own. And we certainly don't need a fat guy with a beard to do it for us. And as for the people who do not practice the Christian faith, what about them? Do they not exist? Are they not considered human beings? And if so, then why aren't their faiths recognized as widely as Christianity? What's up with that? I say we should all keep our religious faiths to ourselves and stop this "mass prayer" bullshit. "Freedom of Religion" wasn't amended into the constitution so we could ignore it, you know.

As for the things I did like, well the musical performers were pretty kick ass. Aretha Franklin made me laugh hard because eventually she stopped singing in coherent words and just started moaning musically. And she still sounded okay. No, I did not enjoy Obama's speech. That's why I slept through half of it. It was horrendously boring.