Begin again

 

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Needless to say, Biden’s inaugural address is what this country has been needing for the past four years. Perhaps longer. The U.S. has been fractured and fissured for generations, and while I’m usually prone to not get lured by rhetoric, this felt very much like a signal for a fresh start.

There’s a sense of “groundedness” in President Biden’s address that has been lacking in recent time. His list of challenges that the country has to face was unvarnished; but it is an inventory the like of which we rarely hear from a president and needs to be said, probably repeatedly for some time to come.

Biden’s more of a Truman than I expected in this; he’s straight talking (and a better rhetorician; good speech-writing here!) and he has something else; a flair for the dramatic that I didn’t know he had! This was dramatic but not bombastic.

I’m sure the pundits will dissect and pore over his words, his performance, and there will be an awful lot of bashing from the more entrenched in an opposite frame of mind. But this always misses the point. We will see the performative and the substantive over the coming years and can make assessments then.

There’s going to be some time to get our footing (again). But if we’ve been locked in a to-the-death wrestling match, perhaps now we can release and change it to an embrace.

I’m not quite as measured as you might think from reading this. There is a storm of emotions going through my mind and heart right now. There is a gratitude and a sense of hope that isn’t characterized by tentativeness so much as recognition that hope is ephemeral and needs work to be justified, that gratitude requires nurture and to nurture it, requires awareness and understanding for all around us.

I’ve been around too long to put much hope in one person, no matter how much that person holds to their convictions, no matter how many of those we may share. Nor do I put much hope in ideals. You can’t, really. However, we can try to live those ideals as best we can.

Over the past four years, I’ve written much spurred on by antipathy and not a little anger; but with an eye to recognizing how self-defeating acting from those bases is. I have tried to remind myself that the roots of the present dig very deep into the past. The past is never “just the past”; as long as we cling to what is past without understanding or not seeing that history is a living process, the present is diminished and the future merely chaotic.

Biden’s address touched on this and Reverend Dr. Silvester Beaman’s benediction used history as a cornerstone in delivering his blessing. But it was Amanda Gorman’s poem that summed up what we need to grasp about our history and what we need to do. I hope I got this right:

“It’s the past we step into

And how we repair it.”

“And how we repair it” will determine how we address what is before us.

It’s a bit early to discuss the what-ifs and the counter-measures that Biden will face; it’s a bit premature to begin fretting over what supporters of the out-going administration will say, think, or do. I’m happy to leave that to the talking heads and analysts who get paid to do so for now.