20 January 2017

The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.

I have, for the past several days, been writing posts in my head about the "peaceful transfer of power" that occurred earlier today, and the frightening prospects for the short term future.

Shall I rail about the Affordable Care Act? I could, but instead I will send you elsewhere to read a letter my sister sent to her local newspaper.

Shall I bemoan the threat to public education? Betsy DeVos is not only unqualified to be the Secretary of Education, but she is clueless and claimed to a Senate committee that it was a "clerical error" that her name appeared as Vice President in the tax return of the family foundation bearing her mother's name. I can't even.

Shall I point out that the National Endowment for the Arts has a budget of $150 million - which is a drop in the friggin' budget so let's just leave the arts out of all this? I don't need to go on about it; the Washington Post did a fine job of pointing out that "cutting federal support for the arts and humanities is a way to fight the culture war, not to tackle the federal debt."

No.

Here's the thing. Pete Souza, who may well be a national treasure, hung around and took just a few more pictures of President Obama as he left the White House today. One of those pictures is an overhead shot of the oval office - where you see the rug. Did you know that the rug has words in its border?

The welfare of each of us is
dependent fundamentally upon
the welfare of all of us.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on


Teddy Roosevelt said that in 1913, in a speech to the New York State Agricultural Association.

Remember our motto? E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

We - you, me, your mother, my boss, that guy who made your sandwich, your friend from college - we need to stick together and rise up as one. We. What I do affects you, what you do affects me, and together we can affect us all.

Yes We Can.

1 comments:

Kyla said...

Yes We Can. As disheartening as yesterday was, especially on a personal level because of interaction with my extremely pro-T mom, the words and actions of the majority of my fellow citizens give me hope.