Exhale

January 21, 2021

      Yesterday, we all felt the way you do when you emerge from a horror movie matinee in the middle of an afternoon.  We found ourselves blinking at the bright sunlight, disoriented by the contrast between where we were and where we are.  The Presidential Inauguration Committee confronted a daunting set of challenges — the threat of white supremacist terrorism and a deadly pandemic — and produced an Inauguration that was, at  appropriate turns somber and joyful.  Yet, from regal young poet Amanda Gorman to a shivering Tom Hanks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Inaugural festivities radiated hope. The entire day was a testament to the brilliance that Americans have to offer when our brilliance isn’t blocked based on color or gender.

     Our hearts exploded with joy as we watched the first Black and South Asian woman take the oath of office as Vice President from the first Latina Supreme Court Justice.  We grinned with pride at the fist bump between President Obama and Vice President Harris and gasped with admiration at the forever flawless Michelle Obama, hair laid, stunning in head to toe cranberry.

    President Biden’s speech called for unity, but did not shy away from naming white supremacy, demonization and hatred as the obstacles to that goal.  He decried outlets where “facts are manipulated,” and “lies are told for power and profit,” (Source:  “Transcript of President Joe Biden’s Inaugural Speech, The Washington Post, 1/21/21).

     It was a sight we had become unaccustomed to — a president who stressed the urgency of rebuilding our broken country and then pledged to the country that “his whole soul is in it,” (ibid).  Biden urged us to find common ground, rather than dividing our countrymen into “us” and “them,” but he did so without whitewashing the racism and threat of violence that stands in the way.

    Later in the day, President Biden signed 17 executive orders erasing some of the most execrable parts of Trump’s legacy.  With the stroke of a pen, President Biden re-joined the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, overturned the Muslim travel ban and stopped construction on the border wall.  He deep-sixed the ahistorical “1776 Commission,” a white supremacist rebuttal to The 1619 Project, (Source:  “Biden’s 17 Executive Orders and Directives in Detail,” by Aishvarya Kavi, The New York Times, 1/20/21).

    President Biden made clear on Day 1, though, that people should not take his kindness for weakness.  He told his appointees at their virtual swearing in that if they treated anyone with disrespect they’d be “fired on the spot.”  He and Dr. Jill Biden fired White House Chief Usher, Timothy Harleth, the former rooms manager at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. who the Trumps brought in to replace the Black woman they fired, (Source:  “Bidens quickly fire chief usher installed by Trump,” by Kate Bennett, CNN.com, 1/21/21).  Biden placed Michael Ellis, the lawyer that Trump had tried to embed in the NSA this past weekend (!) on administrative leave and fired the Trump-appointed, rabidly anti-union General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board when he refused to resign, (Source:  “The Biden administration fired a Trump labor appointee,” by Noam Scheiber, 1/21/21).

    After four years of trauma inflicted by an administration that spent every single day looking for novel ways to persecute Americans, it is a palpable relief to see an administration whose employees display basic decency and competence.  We would do well to remember, though, just how close we came to losing our democracy.  Not only is our job not done, it’s only just beginning.