Hope Implies Desperation

I was briefly watching the news last night. There was a story covering the inauguration. That was a couple weeks ago, so it must have been a slow day for news. I guess nothing new was happening. There was a lady being interviewed who witnessed the inauguration. She said, “There is so much hope. You can really feel it.”

This got me thinking, why did we really elect our president? What were our motives?

“There is so much hope. You can feel it”

Those two sentences express much more than two thoughts. I believe we can all agree that right now, there needs to be some changes made in our country’s leadership. Hope is a feeling, not an a change or an improvement. And what about this “feeling” that the interviewee had? I don’t think that what our country needs now is to feel good, or feel hope. I think that we need results.

I feel good about giving money to a homeless man. He then spent the money on drugs and got too plastered to remember the grace I lent him.

It might be about time we, as a nation, start thinking about our domestic problems at home. Maybe divert our resources away from those who “need” them thousands of miles away, and focus them within our own borders

I feel hopeful that this entry is good enough already to receive an excellent grade, even if I just wrapped it up right now. If that’s really how I feel, then maybe I need a reality check.

It might be good if our nation’s citizens focus on a president that can show that feelings of hope are not sufficient in the real world. There must be tangible results. Not abstract, poorly conceived ideas that might appear good on paper (or a convincing speech), but when addressed logically appear more like a perfect child’s Sunday school answer.


I feel upset when you rubbed it in my face that you beat me in a game of basketball. But looking closer, I have won every game that we’ve played since we were kids. You are justified.

Some people think that finally having a black president is a huge accomplishment in breaking down racial barriers. Other’s feel that the sheer fact that race is mentioned and celebrated is a testament that racism exists. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Barack Obama is black. And it does not matter that his race is celebrated. It is about time we look closer at each other, instead of finding masks to veil our racism.

My hope for America is this:
We stop worrying about specifics following the president. We rally behind him weather conservative, liberal, or our race. We start thinking for ourselves; when we do, we can have a credible voice and truly be a democracy ran by the people- for the people. And most of all, we stop feeling hope and start making change.