WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
• Inauguration Day, and in an address tailored to the moment and maybe to the post-Trump era in the months ahead, Joe Biden kept his first day in office focused on the possibilities of national unity in the face of a rampaging coronavirus and social fractures.
“We’ll press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities,” he said. “Much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain.”
Biden spoke to a crowd of only about two thousand members of Congress, other dignitaries and the personal guests and Biden family, and those invited by Kamala Harris. They were seated at the West Front of the Capitol ravaged only two weeks ago. The resulting rings of armed troops, the sealed off National Mall and its rows of 200,000 American flags was a somber testament to the strange times brought about by the Capitol attack.
“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real,” Biden said. “But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.”
The bipartisan bonhomie that pervades an Inauguration Day saw Sen. Mitch McConnell present Biden with souvenir flags and even House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy congratulated the new president and vice president he had voted to keep out of the White House. By the evening the new president had signed executive orders that are intended to dismantle the Trump legacy by rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, mandating masks for anyone on federal property and on interstate transportation and to ensure a level playing field for minorities in dealings with the government. Another 14 were to come. The White House press briefing room lit up again as Press Secretary Jen Psaki restored regular news briefings, starting out with a lengthy question and answer session. As the briefing ended, the Senate confirmed Avril Haines as direction of national intelligence 84-10, a concrete example of the kind of bipartisanship Biden is aiming for.
President Biden said Trump, surprisingly, had left behind a “very generous letter,” the contents of which he is not divulging for now. Trump, before his departure, had not uttered Biden’s name in comments at the ropeline and before a small crowd of supporters at Joint Base Andrews but he did wish the best for the new administration. Once back at Mar a Lago, the phalanx of the White House pool reporters dissolved, four years of 24/7 monitoring of Trump activities – and toward the end no activities – ended.
• Inauguration Day, for some a muted ceremony held amid a landscape filled with uniforms and fences and razor wire. For others a sign of resilience of a system of government that triumphed over an insurrection. For some Democrats it was more than resilience, it was rebirth of a Phoenix-like spectacle from the ashes of a failed presidency. Just two weeks after the onslaught of killer clowns, intent on cleansing the Capitol of villains created just for Congress by Donald Trump. For many Republicans it was a time of multidimensional sadness, their party hollowed out by the delusions of a single man, trapped in his own alternate reality, asking so many to drink the barrels of “stop the steal” Flavor-Aid. And after the raging march into the Senate and House chambers, a majority of House Republicans and seven Republican senators still voted not to certify Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes as if to thoroughly take ownership of what happened a few hours earlier, of what began with that Dec.19 tweet, “Be there, will be wild.”
• Inauguration Day and with it new beginnings. President Joe Biden, can it be true? Donald Trump, private citizen, now dispatched to the far south, away from the phalanx of reporters and camera people who literally followed him everywhere and, away from New York and Washington, not permitted to tweet ever again. When Democrats heard him say in his recorded video goodbye that the best is yet to come, they maybe nodded, saying if you’re talking about your departure, aye, aye. When Republicans said goodbye, they had to wonder, what exactly does the future hold?
• Inauguration Day, and then Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. When do the fences and razor wire around the Capitol, a prize vacation destination so many Americans have visited over now centuries, come down? How and when will a sizable proportion of the 74 million people who voted for Trump ever come around to agreeing Biden won fairly? More to the point, when do the Boogaloo Boys, the Three Percenters, QAnon, the Oathkeepers, the Holocaust deniers, the white nationalists and supremacists and all the others who coalesced behind Trump – when do they stop plotting together, dreaming of being victors, even martyrs in the battle against tyranny?
• Inauguration Day and the White House coverage baton passes to a new crew, as new people occupy the White house’s Lower Press, and press secretary’s office. Memories of a presidency like no other will keep alive the bonds among those who withstood the blast of hatred day after day that exuded from a president who had to constantly curse the mirror, tell his supporters about the corrupt fake media, the “enemies of the people.” The Jim Acostas, Jonathon Karls and so many others kept trying to get a coherent answer at the ropeline, being the brunt of mocking taunts at MAGA rallies. The threat of an angry crowd finally materialized at the Capitol when news media camera gear was piled up and ignited.
• Inauguration Day, framed in a National Mall kept vacated by armed guards wearing many uniforms, a National Mall filled with 200,000 American flags, representing just half of the victims of a spiky SARS-Covid-2 string of RNA, one of seven coronaviruses that infect humans. An inanimate mechanism, not as alive as a germ and much smaller, found Americans are particularly vulnerable, because they are particularly receptive to taking sides. My side doesn’t wear masks. Your side are a bunch of wimps. My side will fight your side to the death. And so we died, in numbers greater than in any other country.
• Inauguration Day, and on it’s eve Tuesday night on Fox News, anchor Laura Ingraham said she was nauseated by what she considered fawning news coverage of Biden. “Get me to a vomitorium,” she said. Her guests, conservative podcaster Sara A. Carter, Molly Hemmingway, Federalist senior editor, shared her disgust. Another guest, Rep. Matt Gaetz, repeated the dire forecasts of free-speech repression, open borders, control by the elites and on and on. So the presidency changes hands but the Fox News drumbeat will be accompanied by the mocking and bitter commentary on OAN and Newsmax. Many of their contributors and guests may be named Trump. Will Donald Trump start a Patriots Party? No one missed his top aide’s beginning of his farewell message, “Dear patriots,” or how Stephen Miller ended his message, promising a future in which he and the patriots will be battling together again someday soon.
• Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021. Many relished the day, many mourned the change it is bringing, many finally exhaled, many braced themselves for the next battle. And out of the many, one? Many wished Joe Biden luck on his objective. One, out of many. E Pluribus Unum.
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Contact this writer: denny@macenews.com.
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