Axis Monday I: The Inauguration

I'll keep it short since everybody else is talking about this, but it fits right in with the purpose of Axis Monday, so I unfortunately am required to address the inauguration.

This will be the first in a series of Monday posts which celebrate the Axis Mundi. It seemed a fittingly liminal place to start.

Behold the glory of the Capitol, the Axis Mundi of the nation, bedecked for its greatest recurring festival. Even more exciting than Sundance.

The dome pierces the sky; it is in every sense the axis mundi, the heart of the world.

For years the federal Height of Buildings Act prevented any D.C. building from trumping the Capitol's height; a few other federal buildings now rise higher (mostly Cathedrals and Basilicas) but no private building stands taller.

And tomorrow is the hierophany, the revelation of the sacred, at this very space.


Let's talk about the word inauguration for a moment.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1569, from Fr. inauguration "installation, consecration," from L. inaugurationem (nom. inauguratio) "consecration, installment under good omens," from inaugurare "take omens from the flight of birds, consecrate or install when such omens are favorable," from in- "on, in" + augurare "to act as an augur, predict" (see augur).

Romans were big on foretelling the future through birds and other omens. Tomorrow is a day of many omens, a sacred day, which shall set the future for a long time to come.

Will the omens be favorable?

Obama has made them so.


President Obama's journey by train to the capital these past few days has also been wrought with symbolism: deliberate parallels to Lincoln, but also the simple motif of the grand journey. Mr. Obama cleverly saw that a symbolic gesture of this sort would inspire the country more than wasting a few days in the city. He undertook a quest fraught with liminality, and tomorrow becomes actualized.

When is THE liminal moment?
CNN knows:

I don't make this stuff up, folks.

When Obama takes the oath, he shall--for those few moments--pierce the boundary between the earthly world and the sacred realm. He shall be a conduit, for a mere moment, of everything this country believes in.

All such times are transitory. The oath shall pass; its power shall linger through his inaugural address, and then his power shall fade and he will again become a mere man.

No matter what else transpires, it will be the greatest moment of Barack Obama's life, and it shall henceforth always have a hold on him. A second inauguration, should he prove so fortunate, lacks these same trappings. This is the first. This is the one that counts. For him more than other recent presidents, because of the burden placed on him and the hopes of the people.

Come what may--the inevitable failures and disappointments, the utter impossibility of fulfilling his promise--for this one moment he shall be everything, he shall be Perfect.

And once the speech finishes and the balls begin, life will go on for him and for everyone, and the door to the sacred will seal once more.

All Your Myths Are Belong to Obama

Via Kotaku:

Out of all the things one could talk with President-Elect Obama, someone apparently brought up this: "All your base are belong to us." That's right, the funny English phrase from Zero Wing turned internet meme. In a one-of-us-one-of-us thread over at Scifi site Tor.com in which Obama's geekatude is being discussed, one commenter recounted a story from a friend who claims to have interned for the Obama presidential campaign:

The job involves getting him something to eat, maybe playing a little basketball with him, and basically chatting and getting whatever he needs between important things. During the conversation, apparently Zero Wing came up.

You know, the Sega Genesis video game. I don't know how.

And apparently, my friend made the off-hand comment of "All your base are belong to us".

And Obama leaned forward in his chair, quirked his eyebrow a bit, and responded "What you say?"

Presidents are not normal people. You do not meet them on the street; you do not have anything significant in common with them. They are utterly beyond the reach of normal men.

Even Obama, who presented himself as an everyman, and in many ways is one, is still the instrument of a vast political machine; he has his 'handlers,' though he may resent them; he is a Democrat, the chosen son of the vast and faceless apparatus of government. The transformation of a man from a long-shot candidate to the world's most powerful human being cannot leave him untouched; by being elected, he has left his mortal vestiges behind.

Like the Greek gods, presidents are beyond approach. They are very like humans, but of a higher order, with vastly greater power. Therefore, just like the Greeks did with their gods, we mythologize Obama. Every subculture seeks to make him their own (Except the Republicans).

The story from Kotaku shows exactly how this is done. The rumor establishes Obama firmly as part of the nerd culture--along with the better supported stories that he is a Trekkie. The veracity of the rumor does not matter. This is how subcultures identify with the unapproachable divine--they create a myth and thus make the divine a patron of their particular beliefs, and thus more accessible.

Apollo, god of reason, light, wisdom, music, the cave, wolves; Athena, wisdom, olives, war, the eponymous city. Each god's domains relate, but not closely. Study the evolution of the myths of these gods and you will see how greatly they vary over time and from place to place, as each era and culture makes a deity their own.

It is our natural instinct to make Obama the president of whatever group we most identify with, whether or not it's true.

Obama, patron god of change, the American Dream, African Americans, post-racialism, internationalism, basketball, grassrootsism, and geek chic.

We make him not the country's president, but our president.