Freedom and Non-Freedom

Obama’s speech didn’t impress me much, even though he made the expected pronouncements, the welcomed observations. As much as it may have moved others, it wasn’t the speech that impressed me.

What impressed me was the inauguration itself.

It was a display of freedom, plain and simple. These hundreds of thousands of people, standing as equals: Hindus, white people, students, Russians, yellow people, Baptists, Democrats, businessmen, women, Lutherans, black people, children, Jews, invalids, Spanish speakers, the unemployed, professors, vegetarians, Poles, guitarists, priests, cooks, Ukrainians, Republicans, Daoists, hookers, the illiterate, illegals, Catholics, Hungarians, gawkers, rockers, AIDS victims, Italians, baseball players, patriots, bums, people with colds, fat people, lawyers, boxers, visitors from any and every city, programmers, Chinese, Vietnam veterans. In short – America. The American people who had just elected their President, and the President who had come to address his people.

There was no elevated podium for the Tsar, with a lower one for the vice-Tsar; there was only a friendly form of ritual. Obama and his wife, not just pressing the flesh, but winking, patting shoulders; Biden snapping a photo of the swearing-in procedure for Obama’s daughter; Cheney being rolled around in a wheelchair; all the Presidents standing as equals, shoulder to shoulder, despite their adversarial struggles.

To paraphrase the Internationale: Obama is no God, and no Tsar. But is he at least a hero? Only time will tell. The American press will call him as they see him – warts and all – and when he exits, he will be just as human as the next leader. The Presidents are just people, neither deified nor window-dressed. They are people who respect themselves, their country, their people, and their ideals. Perhaps their most important ideal is respect, tempered with rigorous, open criticism.

They are a people who are not afraid to be free.

The high spirits leaking through the television screen were intoxicating. Intoxicating? Sober. Convivial. Joyous.

That’s the kind of country they have, over there.

By the way, “over there” is not just the USA. The same sort of feeling prevailed in France, when Sarkozy was elected. And in all the countries of the West it happens the same way.

But over here, it’s a little bit different.

Everybody knows how elections are run over here. So our inaugural procedure should seem familiar: a gigantic pair of gilded doors swings open onto a red carpet, along which the President of Russia saunters into a crowd of dutifully applauding courtiers.

What is the point of that? It’s an overwrought manipulation; pomp and circumstance – the essence of tsarist imperium.

Don’t get me wrong – the institution of Tsar is not all bad. It is regal; powerful; imbued with tradition. It is essential to the milieu; to the climate; to history. And the people seem to like it.

Nevertheless, it would be better if we called (if we weren’t afraid to call) this spade by its real name.

In the USA, words have an exact meaning. Freedom, elections, We the People, the President: each of these holds a relevant value.

And over here? The imperial inaugural procedure is defined by other terms.

Why? Because the words cannot be reconciled with the deeds. No one dares call it monarchy! And when the words overflow the deeds – once the floodgates of freedom are opened – the whole system could wash away.

Freedom is better than non-freedom.

And honesty is better than duplicity.