The Inauguration of President Biden: Some Thoughts From Last Week

            I am writing this a little over 24 hours after President Biden has been sworn into office and a series of executive actions and policies are being reversed.  Criminals previously in control of government departments are being dismissed and the first of a handful of candidates are being reviewed for confirmation into cabinet positions.

            My mood is akin to the relief felt by the survivors of a slasher movie just before the masked killer jumps up from his prone state for another attack on the hapless sex positive teenagers that think it is all over… Maybe my cynicism is too much.  I know, logically that the future is marching on, but I am also acutely aware that Donald Trump did not storm the capital by himself January 6^th, which will end up being some sort of parody holiday in the future akin to 4-20 or May the 5^th.

             No matter how orange he is, Donald Trump will not magically turn back into a racist pumpkin just because the clock struck 12 yesterday.  The various crooks and schemers that he gave power and influence are still skulking in the shadows, they did not turn back into mice.  Things are still bad.  Trump was not only a culmination of a great many awful things in this country, he was just the latest and he will not be the last.

            It is troubling that Joe Biden ran on the “Build Back Better” slogan that is… nakedly synonymous to the phrase “Make Great Again” and no one seems to care.  Both political parties ran on a message of returning to a prelapsarian past.  And when the restoration of the relatively not-evil political party only takes you back 4 years to the same paradigm that led to the rise of the fascist pumpkin to begin with I have to ask why everyone is so relieved.

           Why is everyone so relieved?

           There is so much pageantry and performative “change”.  You would have thought that a young woman reading a poem had cured Covid for all the people weeping over it.  I get it, I do.  It is not for nothing that the first non-white VP is a thing, a woman likely to be running for President in 4 years.  That is good in the nebulous way all breaking down of color barriers are good.  But that doesn’t actually fix the underlying alienation and toxic bullshit that gave birth to the QAnon death cult or the Nazis-in-all-but-name jerk offs like the Proud Boys or the Boogaloos.

             I actually expected worse.  I had expected the capital to be attacked.  I had expected mass shootings in the inner city on election day as a small army of white nationalists would make the drive to non-white areas and stop voting.  I expected assassinations of Democrats and moderate Republicans.  I expected state capitals to be attacked, the logical escalation of the various “protests” that took place over Covid last year which I said at the time signaled to white nationalists that they would not be treated harshly by law enforcement.

            I am thankful that many of my doom saying did not happen.  But to call back to my horror movie monster metaphor from earlier, it is not that the masked killer is about to get up for one last attack, instead the camera is panning from the house full of sobbing survivors out into the dark of the woods where an entire cadre of masked killers stands in waiting for some unseen signal at which time to strike.

             The sequel to this horror show is going into pre-production as we speak.  And it looks like this franchise will have legs.

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