It was a spectacular swearing in of the 46th President of the USA. I had tears of joy as I saw a country swinging back on course, from a period of crass racism brought on by a mad man, using religion, colour and culture to divide a nation.
Yes, the nation threw him out, even if it was by a paper-thin majority.
And the thought that comes to my mind is how did he fool so many people he was the right man? They knew him as a cheat, a womanizer, a liar, and a man with deep rooted psychological problems. But he knew the people too, and knew their weaknesses. That beneath their skin-deep secularism, was a hatred for the coloured people. That underneath their Christianity was a dislike for those who worshipped God in a different way. And that beneath the veneer of kindness was a selfish spirit within each person, which did not believe in helping the poor and needy.
And he exploited these sentiments.
The people who climbed and rioted outside the Capitol building were not evil. They were good people fooled by an evil man.
Sadly, this is the case everywhere.
The lynching mob who string up somebody from another faith are not bad people. No, they are good people who have been fed with wrong thoughts by those who win power by division and polarization.
It was a spectacular swearing in on the ramparts of the same Capitol that had seen riots two weeks back, but this time it was not rioters who scrambled in but Democracy!
And Democracy brought in colour!
A Catholic President! A woman Vice-President, one who’s from an African American father and Indian mother! Sworn in by a Latino judge. “This Land is Your Land’ was sung by a woman born to Puerto Rican parents.  The brilliant, powerful and deeply moving speech was written by an Indian!
And America showed the world that good could win against evil! That secularism could win against polarization!
And the Ku Klux Klan must have put their heads down in defeat.
But that clan, raises its head everywhere. It raised it’s head in Germany, calling themselves Nazis, they believed themselves a superior race and exterminated six million Jews.
And in other parts of the world one particular race, or one particular religion, like friends of Trump, try to grab the rest of the country and say that this nation is ours! That only those who worship this way or that belong here or there.
But it was a spectacular swearing in we saw in Washington, which told the rest of the world, that true unity comes in diversity.
I pray the world saw the truth, and share in the White House’s Coloured Joy ..!
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