WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT
Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - daily column #6657
In recent days have we comprehensively restored and re-set to pre-Trump-era lives, non-Trump news days?
Well, woefully, no.
That soap-opera has gone directly into re-runs playing at a Florida resort. It was, you must admit, an unprecedented U.S. election-through-transition-to-inauguration – pomp, party, more people watched than ever …
The whole world – the way medical students watch from an operating theatre gallery, observing surgeons perform procedures, anxious, nervous.
Some cheered, declaring a mad-man was removed from his cockpit. Some presume a steadier hand has taken hold of the tiller.
The first 100 days are the yardstick by which political actions of new administrations take pratfalls.
We’ll see.
Tradition, pageantry and circumstance indeed, an inspiring poet , some speeches, and a luncheon.
Cynics who remember Kennedy’s inaugural will cynically joke, “The torch has been passed to an older generation of Americans … ”
Two weeks, no Trump.
Two weeks of Biden.
No complete change of heart, dismissal of ideology, rejection of Republicanism, or endorsement of anything Biden-ish, but yes, some collage of those, celebrating the gone-ness of Trump. Not everyone, but certainly 80 million Americans, their like-minded watchers around the world, and me – let out a cheer, then heaved our collective heavy sigh. The 2020 U.S. election cycle is over. Renovations to corridors of power are well underway, the uneasy balance of gridlock is being rebuilt.
But it’s early days …
We’ll see.
Everyone knows it takes time for heart transplant patients to recover, regain confidence, and feel steady on their feet again. The world witnessed American open-heart surgery on January 20th, their inauguration day.
Those ‘make American white again’ members of militia groups were not so much Trump followers as they were followers of extremist views – and was happy to pave the way for them to get their votes. Trump will likely never be silenced, but however irrelevant he becomes, those who followed him so ardently haven’t evaporated. Historians will one day look back at some good things which will be diminished by so many that turned out so badly – and the pandemic proved he was out of his depth and could not lie his way clear of it.
But it takes time for wounds to heal. Perhaps you’ve heard that too?
That one-day love-in for Americans saw protests and insurrection were absent; they also know it was not eradicated, but rather just silent for a day. It would be naïve to believe their troubles with insurrection are over. They’ve retreated.
For now.
Watchers of machinations in all countries need, I believe, to be more vigilant than ever to stop terrorists before they fester, but that means stifling expression and speech. That’s tricky.
That inauguration will, in the fullness of time, be no more significant a historical moment than all the others – the world didn’t change, but already we see signs that it was the starting gun for the mid-term races in the U.S.
Life returns, not to normal, but to the managed-chaos of news cycles and geopolitics. Their new President installed, his administration getting writers’ cramp signing promised doings, un-doings, and reversals by executive order rather than legislating …
Less than two-years for Republicans to reconstitute their platform, less than two-years for Democrats to prove theirs; Democrats who would-be-president have two to three years to position themselves to be a better candidate in the future than Harris. Republicans, methinks, began their race too, but under Trump’s shadow, that race is among supplicants currying favours from their exiled dictator/reality show-runner.
Trump was voted out by a collective will that defeated a larger-than-life ego. Some will say it was necessary, a course-correction for a country, a re-set of values and principles; and reality, when the rubber hits the road, a change of party running the show, will cause a collective genuflection in the middle of a pandemic storm.
Whether history records Trump as an aberration, as a publicity stunt that got away from him – or a pivotal time in a country’s history, there is no doubt that many Republicans’ worst fear is not that it was, but that Biden’s presidency will be worse.
We’ll see about that.