In 2009 I felt elation,
2017 brought fear and loathing, and 2021 a profound sense of relief and anticipation.
Writing a blog means
accountability, especially over a long period of time, making me confront my
“former self” and my maturation (or failures) as a writer. I’m not writing for The New Yorker or a newspaper.
This is a litmus test of beliefs and feelings over time when it comes to
current affairs and my interpretation of the arts that I’ve been fortunate
enough to enjoy or to participate in. Not
many of the latter because of the pandemic.
In the spirit of self-evaluation
I see my 2009 piece on Obama’s inauguration as being too euphoric, such lofty
expectations only to be tapered by the reality of Congressional opposition, one
could argue mired in prejudice and the big lie of birtherism.
Eight years later brought
Trump’s inauguration which we just could not watch it. Instead, we sought refuge in the dark of a
movie theatre to see La La Land,
going to the early afternoon showing to bury our senses in fantasy and not
watch a ceremony we thought would be the start of four dystopian years, ones
that might existentially threaten our nation’s very existence, at least as a
democracy and as a leader of the world.
And indeed the very psyche of our nation has been severely damaged. How can we persuade 75 million cult members
that their reality did not exist at all?
Or some members of the Senate and Congress, people who swore their
allegiance to the Constitution? They continue
to justify the big lie of the validity of the election.
We’ve lost a few acquaintances
(but not close friends who share our values) over this uniquely American
schism. The damage from the Trump presidency
is incalculable in lost time, lost lives, widening income disparity, racial
injustice, climate change, and the myriad other issues threatening us, all to
satisfy the ego of a psychologically damaged person. He played to the masses with a rare instinct,
one other demagogues had mastered.
After President Joseph R.
Biden’s inauguration yesterday, I’m feeling that old euphoria from 2009, but now
tempered with caution. Nonetheless, it
should be obvious to anyone who viewed the festivities with an open mind that
we have entered a new era. I had
forgotten that intelligence and grace are compatible with governing. Every word of President Biden’s speech was on
the mark.
From Lady Gaga’s soaring
rendition of the National Anthem, to Biden’s inspirational speech, to Jennifer
Lopez’s moving performance of 'This Land Is Your Land' (so appropriate to have
Woody Guthrie represented, America’s Troubadour), and then the gut-wrenching
beauty of the words of the youngest Poet Laureate , Amanda Gorman, I was in
tears throughout, blubbering, uncontrollable, a flood to wash away the last
four years, ones to mourn the four hundred thousand deaths from this pandemic, so
many of them needless, and then some tears of joy. Gorman’s youth is as notable
as her words; this is the generation we pass the torch to. There is no better man for that and the
moment than Joe Biden.
And to top it all off, an
immediate press briefing, from a new White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, who
is smarter than a whip, and seems eager to stay on point and give accurate
information. No spin or
confrontation. Imagine that, the Truth
with no other hidden agenda? I felt as
if I was watching a Press conference from the West Wing TV series from years
ago.
Finally, a day in the life
of the US we can be proud of. The
contrast is so immense to what has been that it is staggering. Suddenly, light.
Although I am cautioned by
my earlier writings on this occasion not to be a soothsayer, the same former
self reaches out to me and says, yes, yesterday’s inaugural moments might even
touch, however lightly, the darkest soul.
From 2009 and 2017 my inaugural blog entries in their entirety:
Friday, January 20, 2017
LA,LA,LA, In La La Land
It might seem
disrespectful. In many ways it was, a
silent protest, seeing La La Land
instead of our new President’s inauguration, the first one we’ve missed in
decades. It seems like yesterday when we
were filled with hope as evidenced by what I wrote exactly eight years
ago. The complete text is at the end of
this entry.
After watching the never
ending ennui of the Republican primaries and the solipsistic behavior of our
new President-elect, how could anyone welcome his presence in the oval
office? And I’m referring to his
behavior, not necessarily his policies, which, to be fair, remain to be
seen. We had hoped Obama would have been
more effective, but how could he given the illegitimacy narrative so infused by
the right and particularly by the new President himself? All those years contending he was not born
here, that he is a secret Muslim, ad infinitum.
It was their objective to block any and everything and for the most part
they succeeded. Still, the unemployment
rate has dropped from 9.3% when he took office to below 5% and the Dow has
tripled (although I am not naïve enough to singularly credit President Obama
for these changes, but his leadership had an impact). Obama was not a “perfect”
President, particularly in foreign affairs, but he was a decent, rational
person. Can we say the same, now?
And now there are
accusations of Trump being an “illegitimate” President because of Russia’s
interference (not to mention Comey’s).
As there is no evidence that ballot boxes were hacked, he is not
illegitimate in the legal sense of the word, but one can reasonably conclude
the election was tainted. One cannot
prove an alternative reality but no doubt these events impacted the election
results.
I had to laugh (or cry) at
Trump’s assertion that “we have by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever
assembled.” You would therefore think
that his pick for Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, would have a better excuse
for his failure to reveal $100 million in assets and links to a tax haven
company, than saying “as you all can appreciate, filling out these government
forms is quite complicated.” After all,
isn’t he a genius like all the rest of the Goldman Sachs ringers appointed to
the Cabinet? Not that I have anything
against Goldman Masters of the Universe other than when Trump was running he
equated them with the “swamp” of the establishment, paying Hillary Clinton for
speeches.
But I’ve now read Trump’s
Inaugural address which, when read, sounds like many of his impromptu
electioneering stump speeches, but pulled together into one dystopian
narrative. I’m ready to embrace a
stronger economy, jobs for all, but we’ve been on that trajectory for years
now. Rather than rebutting some of the
speech, point by point, NPR has done a good job with fact checking. Not that facts matter anymore in this
post-factual, reality TV world.
So, to us the perfect
antidote to the malaise of fear and despair over the election was seeing La La Land while the new President was
sworn in and fêted. The movie is a
sweeping reaffirmation of the power of music and the arts, and a declarative
statement that the American film musical is back. It’s wonderful that a new generation is ready
to embrace this art. There’s a lot to be
said about living in fantasy when one goes to a movie theatre, but it’s another
matter to live one’s real life in the real world with leadership in serious
doubt. I hope President Trump transcends
all these concerns.
Nonetheless, what a
difference eight years make…
Monday, January 19, 2009
Early in the Morning
It is early in the morning
on the eve of President-elect Obama’s inauguration – in fact very early,
another restless night. When it is so early and still outside, sound travels
and I can hear the CSX freight train in the distance, its deep-throated
rumbling and horn warning the few cars out on the road at the numerous
crossings nearby.
Perhaps subconsciously my
sleeplessness on this, the celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday,
relates to the incongruous dreamlike images of the bookends of my political
consciousness, from the Little Rock desegregation crisis of 1957, the freedom
marches that culminated with the march on Washington in 1963 and Martin Luther
King’s historic "I Have a Dream" speech, to the inauguration tomorrow
of our first Afro-American President. All this breathtaking demonstration of
profound social change in just my lifetime.
Much has now been said
comparing Obama to Lincoln. In my “open letter” to Obama that I published here
last May. I said “Your opponents have
criticized your limited political experience, making it one of their main
issues in attacking your candidacy. Lincoln too was relatively inexperienced,
something he made to work to his advantage. Forge cooperation across the aisle
in congress, creating your own ‘team of rivals’ as Doris Kearns Goodwin
described his cabinet in her marvelous civil war history.”
The Lincoln comparison is
now omnipresent in the press, not to mention his cabinet selections indeed
being a team of rivals. But I am restless because of what faces this, the very
administration I had hoped for: a crisis of values as much as it is an economic
one. The two are inextricably intertwined.
I am reading an unusual
novel by one of my favorite authors, John Updike, Terrorist. One of the main characters, Jack Levy laments: “My
grandfather thought capitalism was doomed, destined to get more and more
oppressive until the proletariat stormed the barricades and set up the worker’
paradise. But that didn’t happen; the capitalists were too clever or the
proletariat too dumb. To be on the safe side, they changed the label
‘capitalism’ to read ‘free enterprise,’ but it was still too much dog-eat-dog.
Too many losers, and the winners winning too big. But if you don’t let the dogs
fight it out, they’ll sleep all day in the kennel. The basic problem the way I
see it is, society tries to be decent, and decency cuts no ice in the state of
nature. No ice whatsoever. We should all go back to being hunter-gathers, with a
hundred-percent employment rate, and a healthy amount of starvation.”
The winners in this
economy were not only the capitalists, the real creators of jobs due to hard
work and innovation, but the even bigger winners: the financial masters of the
universe who learned to leverage financial instruments with the blessings of a
government that nurtured the thievery of the public good through deregulation,
ineptitude, and political amorality. This gave rise to a whole generation of
pseudo capitalists, people who “cashed in” on the system, bankers and brokers
and “financial engineers” who dreamt up lethal structures based on leverage and
then selling those instruments to an unsuspecting public, a public that
entrusted the government to be vigilant so the likes of a Bernie Madoff could
not prosper for untold years. Until we revere the real innovators of
capitalism, the entrepreneurs who actually create things, ideas, jobs, our
financial system will continue to seize up. That is the challenge for the Obama
administration – a new economic morality.
Walt Whitman penned these
words on the eve of another civil war in 1860:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it would
be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or
beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or
leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat,
the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter
singing as he stands,
The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in
the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young
wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none
else,
The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of
young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
It is still early in the
morning as I finish this but the sun is rising and I’m going out for my morning
walk. Another freight train is rumbling in the distance. I hear America
singing.