Needless to say, a nation capable of sending a man like Donald Trump to the White House twice is not well. It was of course possible to understand his election in 2016 as a fluke, a win delivered by the electoral college over the opposition of most voters. But the legitimacy of his election this time around has shifted the mood around his second inauguration significantly. The protests have been sparser, the liberal pundits are quieter, the resistance, all told, seems weaker. Ten years into the Trump era and due for at least another four, we’ve been humbled into near-impotence, a victory for the only ideology Trump has ever been committed to, which is humiliation.
It must have been a real pleasure, given this, to have Biden, Harris and much of the Democratic party’s leadership sit and listen on Monday afternoon to an inauguration speech that featured many of the lies and distortions about the Biden administration that he trotted out on the campaign trail. The invasion of criminal immigrants, economic decline, the abolition of free speech, the indoctrination of children – all of it’s over and all will be well now that America’s being carried forth not only into a new administration but, per Trump, a new era in American history.
