Trump Inauguration: The Beginning of Greatness or the End?

          "No more uncertainty, no more fear, no more worry." is what you're supposed to feel after a Presidential Inaugural Speech. However, while Trump's speech was supposed to address the concerns of his opposers, it mostly just catered to his supporters. I say "mostly" for a reason. This speech, overall, is one of Trump's best, when compared to the speeches he made during his run for office. Trump is a terrible speaker, I don't think many people will argue with that. Going off on tangents and inserting infamous "Trump One-Liners" really weakens his arguments for anyone who doesn't already agree with him. So what made this speech so much better than his others? He stuck to the script. It seems that the messages he wants to convey are much stronger and deeper than how he is able to convey them. This time, while he still doesn't give specifics, he talks more realistically, less "believe me" or "you'll see", as many of his other speeches have contained.
          There is only one moment in the speech where this Trump trait shines through, "America will start winning again. Winning like never before.". What does that mean? Does it have any substance backing it up? Or is it just a vague promise, catering to the most patriotic of citizens? For the most part, Trump's speeches contain no details or actual proof of "winning like never before". Trump relies on his audience to believe in his rhetoric and to especially never ask questions aimed at him. His speeches and entire campaign relied on the American people's pathos or appeal to emotion. He knew that the American people were suffering and decided to use that as his main promise, to "Make America Great Again". Like most presidential slogans, Trump's MAGA is vague and can be taken differently by everyone. When comparing this to Obama's 2008 slogan of "Change", we can see that they both can be taken in the same way even if the people behind the slogan are different in many ways.
          But enough about the negatives. Did his speech work? To answer it simply, I don't know. I have no authority to speak on the overall effectiveness of Trump's Inaugural Address. I believe, as I stated earlier, inaugural speeches are needed to convince the other side that the next four years are not going to be as bad as they might have thought. Did Trump's speech do that? Again, I don't know. I've talked to a few opposers of Trump over the past few days and everyone gives me a different answer, but for the most part they all still said: "I don't know.". Since this is the answer that I got most often, I guess that Trump's speech was not effective by definition of the parameters set by me.
          Let's compare him to a mostly successful president and his speech in 1981. By far, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have been the most compared presidents during this entire campaign. They're both outsiders, relatively. They're both successful people in the private sector. They both have the main focus of bringing work back to America. Reagan's speech is, unsurprisingly, very similar to Trump's in the sense that appealed very heavily to emotion and little to fact. However, I don't think I've ever heard any president using several specific facts in any general speech to the public. So there's one similarity.
          However, there is one striking difference. Reagan uses much more poetic language throughout the whole thing, while Trump finishes his speech with an awkward poetic break in his otherwise stern and straight forward speech. Did this make Reagan's speech more effective? Yes. Even if you lack the ability to comprehend what Reagan is saying within his speech it still sounds more elegant and thoughtful than Trump's "bull in a china shop" approach to the speech. Was Trump's speech any good? Somewhat. Was his message good? Yes. As I said before, his speaking skills pale in comparison to others, but the actual text of the speech is actually not bad. Overall, I believe that if this speech was given by someone else then many of Trump's opposers wouldn't be thinking of this speech as crude or undeveloped.
          Did I enjoy the speech? Yeah, I guess. Did it convince me that the next four years are going to be a smooth ride? Definitely not. However, we must look to the future, not dwell on past mistakes. Trump is president now, and in the short-term there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Always trying to bring him down, or catch every mistake he makes, or even simply wishing for him to fail is like wanting a pilot to crash a plane we're all in.

Times of Change

I've been on this Earth for 16 years, 4 months, 1 day and if I've learned one thing, it's that I have so much to learn. This upcoming semester will test every bit of the knowledge I have accumulated over the years. It's turning out to be the hardest academic year of my life. With three AICE classes and a completely new field of science. I've already stayed up until 2:00 am one night to finish homework so my habits for procrastination will have to change as well.  I fear that I won't be able to adapt and my
work will consume me. I fear that I won't be good enough for all life has to throw at me. If I'm struggling with this, how will I respond to life's truly hard challenges? Everyone likes to think that we understand life, but really nobody does. Next year will be my last year of high school and I'll have to start applying to college. This semester will set the ground work if I succeed or not.

However, I'm not necessarily scared, just fearful. What am I excited for? It would be hard to pinpoint just a few things. What am I most excited? I'm excited to get my AICE diploma (if all things go well with exams), I'm excited for the completion of my Junior year, and I'm excited to apply to colleges (no matter how scared I am at the same time). So much is happening in such a short amount of time and it's incredibly terrifying as well as exciting. All I know it that this semester will be my most difficult and exciting yet and I hope I can make the best of it.