Consequences

From the moment the President-elect arrives at the White House door and is welcomed inside for an awkward breakfast, until the moment when that same person, duly sworn, steps down from the parade grandstand to walk through the same door into a place now called home, the entire Inauguration Day is a ritual.  It honors and strengthens the conviction that what we share is bigger than what divides us, and what we decide, in our elections, matters more than any person or any party.
…
It is Trump’s conviction, now vindicated by the Electoral College, that fame, properly managed and wielded, equals power.
It’s no easy thing to reconcile that conviction with the idea that power, in America, is bigger than any individual.  But Trump submerged his own ego in the idea of an empowered populace.  “The forgotten men and women of our country,” he promised “will be forgotten no longer.”
This message, and the nationalist jingo that Trump has married to it, has been a long time coming.  It was spawned by the culture wars, stoked by the Great Recession, and spread by the winds of technological disruption.  We the People have often been leery of political establishments, but rarely have the insiders looked so feckless in the face of global pressures, and never has it been so easy to communicate their perceived failures.
Trump was right when he said that the message is bigger than the messenger — another statement that he might not believe, deep down.  But he not an outsider any longer.  He is the president.  His words will have consequences.  As another Inauguration Day faded from Washington with the faint sun in the clouded West, the world began preparing for their arrival.
—    David Von Drehle
Excerpts from the article / editorial covering the inauguration of Donald Trump titled:  “Donald Trump’s Unprecedented, Divisive Speech“
With reporting by Tessa Berenson, Zeke J. Miller and Josh Sanburn
Time Magazine, Jan. 30, 2017
.
On This Day In:
2021	Certainly Ending
	The Moment When
2020	#45: The Biggest Loser’s Self-Image
	Happy Thanksgiving 2020!!
2019	Defining Trumpism In Today’s Republican Party
2018	#45: It’s Tougher Being President
2017	Consequences
2016	Shouting At The Void
2015	Crab Feed
	Happy Thanksgiving (2015)
2014	Beyond Proof
2013	Poor Students Of History
2012	Between Two Worlds
2011	Common Humanity
2010	The Last Two Olympians

Advertisement