Silent No More

As boos sounded upon the introduction of the outgoing president, vice-president and the lower tier of supporting players in the neo-con Grand Guignol, the people, clearly, have found their voice.

For juxtaposed with the jubilation was a volcanic bitterness tamped down by years of abuse. The people's anger is a righteous anger and the volume of disdain is proportionate to the pain they had to endure; the shame of watching their leaders tear the American dream to tatters and casting the tatters to the wind while they profited and laughed.

The people are now stirred and, though they may not always express their passions in an orderly fashion, will no longer be silenced. They have tasted the fruits of a long sought after victory. For years, their protests have been relegated to fenced-off areas away from the scrupulously controlled spectacle of Bush's lurid circus maximus, the rising anger of a people banished to a free speech gulag some distance away from the Mission Accomplished banners and Republican fundraisers.

But Barack Obama is our new leader, our new son of freedom. He is at once at the center of a force and the force itself. That he is the right person for this job can not be denied, indeed there must be no more Orwellian denials of the sort the outgoing administration engaged in daily, hourly.

And yet as we see, feel and hear the energized passion in the masses, one need only look to the periphery to the steely face of a Boehner, to the rush and fumble of a Justice Roberts, their hostility and discomfort with the new era so apparent. They are not so jubilant, they are not so hopeful. They are in fact waiting, regrouping. And they are patient.

But they are now themselves faced with a greater obstacle than they have ever reckoned on: an alert people, an awakened people.

A vocal people.

A people who are now empowered to express themselves loudly, proudly. Silent no more.