Fragment #10 - Another day in History

So now it is done. Since yesterday evening, Barack Hussein Obama has become the 44th president of the United States. And the very first black man to hit the jackpot. I’ve watched the ceremony and listened the enthronization speech, and even this morning when I got up, I still had a disturbing feeling growing in my belly. It is quite odd to think that fifty or a hundred years ahead in time, children in school will have the year 2008 printed in their history books. That they will study the financial crisis the way we studied the 1929’s crisis and its “black Tuesday”. And of course, that they will know this very name: Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States. Of course depending on the upcoming events, they will learn that the only thing he ever did was deceiving the hopes the whole world had placed upon him, or else that he was a good and strong president, triumphantly re-elected in 2012. But that, no-one can tell for sure, neither does he. It is weird to fell part of the History-making process. Although of course, nobody will remember me in the history books. And though the children will also study President Bush’s private war in Iraq, and the way he played mind-games with the UN, before simply ignoring them, putting their survival at stake, it never felt this way. It might be the difference between the good, and the bad news. Although for some, this election obviously sounds like bad news.
I watched the whole coronation on TV, and watching the crowd gathered in Washington DC made me shiver. I heard on the radio that 2 million people attended the ceremony, and that 3 to 5 million people had come, although not everyone found its place. The speech was great, but I’ve became very frustrated with the French translators. It was remotely impossible to hear the original phrases behind the French translation as they’re used to tone down the volume of the orator. I never noticed it was that way in Ireland. Surely because I wasn’t trying to understand what the translated person said back then. Having to grasp the meaning of the discourse in my poor French while missing the key wordings in my native language bothered me so much I jumped on my computer the second it was over, in order to get the script.
I proceeded by checking of my mailbox then. I received three answers to the advertisement about my flat. Teddy, Catherine and Alex… Well, I guess I have to set up some meetings.
Well… I leave tomorrow for a match in Strasbourg and I won’t be back until Friday. So I bet Saturday is the time.