Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause.
President Joseph R. Biden
Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as they were sworn in Wednesday as our new president and vice-president. The above quote came from Biden's inaugural address...I'm all for national unity but only on the level of dealing with one another with grace and empathy as we work out expressing our legitimate differences with one another...denying the 2020 election results just because your idol-president lost is NOT one of them. And can we please dispense with the wacko conspiracy theories and speak plainly with reality as a common basis for debate? Hey, I realize that's probably not going to happen but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway...
Speaking only of my own history following presidents, although I was born in 1956 during the Eisenhower administration and clearly remember the time of John Kennedy's assassination in 1963, I really didn't begin to take notice of the U.S. presidency until Lyndon Johnson began sending American troops to Vietnam in 1965...and would often preempt regular evening TV programming with his "My fellow Americans" speeches. After Johnson there were Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...and then the first presidential election I voted in, 1976, between the latter and Jimmy Carter, who won it. Then came Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and finally Donald Trump. For the ten presidents I've followed over the past 55 years I've liked a few and disliked a few...but have never placed any of them on a special pedestal as an idol the way tens of millions of Trump supporters have over the past five years. There has been no president for whom I couldn't find some things to both criticize and laud...and I confidently expect the same to be true with Mr. Biden. I don't expect the fascist-leaning media talk jocks like Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin or Laura Ingraham to do anything other than demonize our new president in everything he says or does...if you're depending on these people for your information then you're deliberately bubbling yourself off from reality, in my opinion. I wish the new administration success in making our country stronger and managing crises, both the ones we are currently experiencing with the pandemic, economic displacement, racial inequity, fascist extremism and those to come. I don't expect that much of the progressive agenda will be passed through Congress, and that's fine with me...let's see if the two parties can get that old spirit of compromise back into swing...at least in the Senate (the House Republicans are overwhelmingly fascist) and work out some meaningful ways forward to the country's benefit. And I'm glad that, at least for the next two years, the President's party will (barely) control the Senate...meaning that his nominees for Cabinet, federal judges...and potential new Supreme Court justices...will be considered and voted upon. I know that Mitch McConnell and Biden go back a long time together in the Senate...maybe ol' Joe can be more personally engaged and effective with those in Congress than Barack Obama was. And then maybe I'm again throwing something out there that's probably not going to happen...
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