This is my first diary. I apologize in advance for any screwups, and I'll delete it if it's duplicative.
I'm sitting here at my desk at work after having just read Obama's speech today on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr's assassination- tears in my eyes. That guy did it to me again! I remember driving around in my car listening to Obama's speech the night of the New Hampshire primary and choking up then. I'm a man of New England Yankee stock and not prone to tears-Obama's made me 'go there' more than any other in my life. Now I don't even need to hear him give the speech to choke up - I can read it and hear him saying it in my head.
The transcript:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpoi...
and thanks to soms and YouTube, here's footage of the speech:
So much of the speech is quotable, excerpting just a small part seems criminal. But:
"Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice.
So on this day – of all days – let’s each do our part to bend that arc.
Let’s bend that arc toward justice.
Let’s bend that arc toward opportunity.
Let’s bend that arc toward prosperity for all.
And if we can do that and march together – as one nation, and one people – then we won’t just be keeping faith with what Dr. King lived and died for, we’ll be making real the words of Amos that he invoked so often, and "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Oh- these historic days we are living in! This campaign has brought many of us to places we didn't expect 6 months ago- even 3 months ago. We can speculate on the effect of this speech- does it silence the knuckleheads at Faux News (temporarily, maybe), will excerpts on the evening news cause folks to talk about it around the dinner table? Will we all advance even a half step because of this? It seems like there's so little of substance that comes our way now that our culture increasingly favors instant gratification, the soundbyte, the fleeting, the "gotcha" and the "quick fix".
But we keep moving forward- hopeful, hopeful, hopeful.