I “attended” only one Inauguration, that of John F. Kennedy in 1961. I had been married only six months, and my husband and I took the train to D.C. It was a bitter cold and snowy day. Our train contained many members of Congress. Because of the snow, the train crawled and arrived very late.. All of us heard JFK’s stirring Inaugural Address on our portable radios, one train. We missed a historic moment. It was a frustrating moment for all of us, me especially, because I had worked for months in the Kennedy campaign, at campaign headquarters at 277 Park Avenue in Manhattan (since replaced by a high-rise building). I remember when he visited us. I was struck by how freckled he was and starstruck like everyone else.
Our reader Greg B. reflects on the importance of the Inaugural ceremony.
It strikes me that the upcoming inauguration can only be compared to both of Lincoln’s inaugurations. They will have been the only three in which there was serious concern about the life of the president. I think, very sadly, the many of us here and elsewhere who have expressed fear about the rise of fascism and intolerance in this nation over the past five years have been proven to be correct. What I feared in 1989 when I was a part of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism has come to fruition.
Making it even sadder, the only inauguration I experienced personally was the Clinton’s first in 1993. It was a celebration. The tents from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival were erected on the National Mall for a musical, culinary and cultural celebration. It featured musical acts from the range of American experience. I remember being in the tent that had McCoy Tyner, followed by Etta James, followed by Booker T and MGs (!!!), and concluded by the Very Rev. Al Green (!!!!!!). Front freaking row. Free. For the people.
I remember sobbing like a baby when watching tv as the crowd at Obama’s first inaugural celebrated in peace and joy and wishing I could have been there. And while I was just a baby, I remember later learning about JFK’s stirring speech at his inaugural. I also remember laughing at Sean whatever-his-name-is making a fool of himself and cheering my wife and her friends on at the Women’s March from a distance four years ago.
The Idiot has taught me how to hate, something I didn’t think would have been possible four years ago. But mostly, I hate what this craven Idiot and his enablers have done to our national rituals, rituals that confirm the legitmacy–not perfection–of our system of governing. And what they continue to do. They have robbed our Nation–and more importantly, our Nation’s historical and international standing–of an essential act of legitimacy. Murderers of people and our system of governing are still at large, both within and outside of our governing institutions. We must take it back. More importantly, we must all pledge to protect President Biden. Whether we supported his candidacy or not, we must do so to restore this nation’s legitimacy, for us, the world and posterity.
Thank you, Greg B. for your writings.
I also have been taught to hate. Lately, I’ve been waking up each morning and the first thought on my mind was, “I hate Trump and everything he does.” I’m mad at the far R media that continues to distort and cover up everything that Trump has done. Their ignorance can bring down this country.
I’m concerned about the 147 people that Trump has pardoned. Each one of these criminals will now pledge their total loyalty and do Trump’s bidding.
I do hope that all the state lawsuits against Trump will put him in prison for the rest of his life.
Opps, 143 were pardoned. BUT, who knows what Trump will do before he leaves today.
An excellent essay. Decency is back. CBK
Yes, decency. From the man who promised $2,000 checks the day he took office if Ossoff and Warnock were elected – the same man who is now saying it won’t be $2,000 and it won’t be until at least February, maybe as late as April. It’s a good thing that decent man has empathy for the tens of millions of people facing homelessness in January during a pandemic.
Your cynicism knows no bounds.
Give the guy a break. Believe it or not, though I was devastated when Trump won, I was willing to give him a chance and hope for the the best. Before you make your mind up – please do the same.
flos56 and dienne flos56 is right about that.
Also, from my reading of this blog, I doubt you’ll find anyone here who is unwilling to criticize Biden, as you are unwilling to criticize Trump, especially where education is concerned. In other words, we are not sycophants to Biden. We just want someone who understands and is sincere about the oath he took to the U.S. Constitution.
I really wonder if you can understand the difference between (1) criticisms aimed at disagreements on policy, and (2) criticisms aimed at a four-year attempt to dismantle democracy and the U.S. Constitution itself.
I promise: it won’t kill you to try to understand that difference; and it will make you a better participant in conversations here. CBK
HOPE is what we have today and you insist on “peeing on the parade”! WOW!! No, it’s not going to be perfect or easy or change as fast as we want, but it is change in the right direction. We have had 4 years of living under a very dark cloud and I, for one, like that little ray of sunshine. Biden was not at the top of my list, but he is at least a human being that is capable of decency, empathy, sympathy and grace.
Show some respect and shut the heck up! Today is not the day to spew your hate.
Thank you LisaM, my thoughts exactly!
CBK and Lisa M,
Brilliant — thank you so much for those replies.
There is something so off when the non-stop apologists for Donald Trump (and Putin) anoint themselves the arbiters of “decency”. I don’t think they have a clue what that word means. Or their definition of “decency” is one that Orwell would recognize as a sign of their embrace of the neo-fascist, Steve Bannon agenda to make “truth”and “fact” whatever serves their personal agenda
I was 5 when Jan 20 saw JFK sworn in on a day that was snowy even in Tennessee. We walked about a half a mile to a neighbor’s house in the snow. they had a TV. Turrentines are notoriously tight-fisted. I recall very little about the matter. I now wonder if it was really snowy that day, or whether the snow I remember was on TV.
I will probably not watch today either, but I might listen. Many of the Tennesseans who are not arrested for storming the capital will no doubt scream at the TV. Deep trumpism has left a scar on our communities.
Meanwhile, the Tennessee state legislature will consider a Penny Schwin proposal to mandate phonics instruction to cure the “learning gaps” caused by the pandemic. Like the good teachers we have who have been getting Covid at an alarming rate have never heard of phonics. Our state is led by sycophants.
Is sycophants a synonym for idiots?
Not idiot per se, but idiologists-a believer in idiologies*.
*Idiology (n.) Belief system built on lies, falsehoods, religious mythologies, and absurdities. The ideology of idiots.
I was thinking more that they would use the learning gap thing to increase the freedom of a few people to make money at the expense of the many. I do not think they are idiots. Criminals perhaps, but not idiots. Sort of makes it worse. Recall that Lee was the governor last year when the vote for his voucher plan was kept open in the senate here in Tennessee while secret deals were being made by a man who is now under investigation by the FBI.
The most important significance of today is that it is the last day that “But Trump!” is an excuse. Biden and the Democrats own whatever happens from here.
I would say that the importance of today is that Trump does not get another 4 years to load up the SCOTUS and lower courts with far right-wingers/libertarians/religious conservatives.
Dienne never objected to Trump’s actions. Only to his critics.
And in your view, Trump is not responsible for anything ever. Not even in the past four years.
dienne77 Why are you here? CBK
She’s here to lord it over us mere mortals. D-77 is under the delusion that she is morally superior to “you people” or the other commenters here at Diane Ravitch’s blog. If there were a Diane Ravitch blog in 1933, she would be railing and wailing against FDR.
D-77 has lectured me for years, warning that she has lost respect for me for something I wrote. Condescension alert.
Joe Jersey,
If there was this blog in 1933, she would be railing and wailing against all critics of Hitler and insisting that Hitler was a normal politician no worse than others and how we MUST defeat Hitler’s critics for not being good enough and we should all shut and up and do what she does and never criticize Hitler.
If this were 1944, she would be yelling “The most important significance of today is that it is the last day that “But Hitler!” is an excuse. The Allies own whatever happens from here.”
^^ugh, correction:
“If this were May 1945, she would be yelling “The most important significance of today is that it is the last day that “But Hitler!” is an excuse. The Allies own whatever happens from here.”
D77: Far beyond who gets the blame as president, the actual question is how powerful the presidency is. Do we want a very powerful executive who can change policy quickly? Is this too much power invested in an executive? And what of the judicial influence?
Amen, Greg B. And thank you.
Agreed. Well said, Greg B. A nice wrap up after watching the inauguration.
To quote Obama, today marks a new beginning in which we will not have to think about the President every single day. I am tired of the mental exhaustion that Trump and his enablers inflicted on the rest of us. Even if I do not agree with Biden on everything, I feel confident he will be looking out for our country and its people.
That’s a huge difference, retired teacher. I won’t wake up every morning wondering what new outrage the president has perpetrated.
The utter abomination, the absurdist, surreal nightmare, that was the Trump maladministration has ended.
Goodbye, Loser!
However, as The Idiot said in his parting comments at Andrews AFB today, he will, like some virulent disease, “be back in some [virulent?] form.”
Make no mistake about this: The Moronavirus trumpinski orangii will still be capable of spreading until it is confined to a federal facility such as ADX Florence.
BTW, what is the difference between the Hindenburg and Donald Trump? One is a flaming Nazi gasbag, the other, a dirigible.
Ofc, the Idiot sort of looks like a dirigible.
BTW, the Trump baby hot air balloon (which is distinct from Trump himself, despite the uncanny resemblances) is the be displayed at the London Museum.
In other news, “Trump Presidential Library” is that rare thing, a double oxymoron. Trump has never been anywhere near a library, and he was never in the slightest presidential.
cx: is to be displayed
Forget the library; give him a TV in a swamp in Florida.
A TV in a swamp between a megachurch and a porn shop. That would be Flor-uh-duh.
Bob Shepherd; I read that Trump’s presidential library will be an outhouse with post-it notes holding his Twitter.
If it contained all the books that Trump has read, it would contain nothing but air. Make that hot air, and it would be a perfect encapsulation of the man. Ecce homo.
The Trump library will be a CD filled with thousands of tweets.
dienne77 Do you really not understand how government works? And, and if you displayed a mature sense of patience, you might understand how others here view your post about getting $2000 checks.
BTW, apparently it’ll be $1,400 to account for the earlier $600. I guess, from a simplistic view fueled by a focus on bottom-feeder ideas, Biden “lied.
But in my view, it IS “a good thing that decent man has empathy for the tens of millions of people facing homelessness in January during a pandemic;” . . . and I trust that he won’t be trying to make some money for himself, his bottom-feeder family, and his Wall-Street buddies.
I have to ask you, though: Why are you not so cynical about Trump? Certainly, there’s plenty there to be cynical about? CBK
This just in from Education Week:
“Biden to Revoke Trump’s ‘Patriotic Education’ Order, Shield DACA on First Day. The president-elect promises a flurry of early executive actions that include a government-wide emphasis on racial equity.” CBK
The gods of politics, kicking each other in the butt, pointing fingers for the Trump experiment, relented and finally gave us an empathy-filled Biden.. Empathy is needed today, for those suffering from the virus, those who have felt threatened by racism,
those who have cringed these past four years every time we turned on the television. and those Seahawk fans who were sure of a Super Bowl celebration.
Double amen, Greg B. Restoration is key. I’m going to enjoy this inauguration like no other I’ve seen before, if only for its promises.
On another note, I was also five when Kennedy was elected. I remember while walking with my parents to vote (in Brooklyn at Erasmus High School) I found a Kennedy button. I asked my parents who they were voting for and announced I was for Kennedy. It was my political awakening and I was ecstatic when “my candidate” won. I remember looking through the Sunday papers for pictures of Caroline (who I envied) and how devastated I was when our president was assassinated.
I’ve had much joy and disappointment in our politics over the years, but I have hope today that we are once again on the right track and that the policies going forward will be humane, not mean spirited.
President Jimmy Carter did not attend the inauguration. Hope he isn’t too ill to attend. Does anyone know anything about this?
Carter is a fine man. He is 96. The travel was too much for him.
I missed President Carter today. Recently read Stuart Eizenstat’s bio/memoir of the Carter years and I finally realized how the ignorance of youth obscured my understanding of him (but as Eizenstat makes clear, it was also somewhat Carter’s fault that I did so). I was an Anderson true believer; another type of political figure we sorely miss today.
Another person I missed today was Bob Dole. He is 96 and having his own health issues. I never supported him politically, but have long admired and respected him. He is a remarkable man, one who loves his nation and I believe he would have been a great statesman had it not been for his ambition to be president. I would have loved to see both him and Carter on the stage today.
Thanks, Diane, and all my patient therapists out there. Today is a very good day. The future won’t be easy, it never has been. But I know many of us feel better and more confident about the steps we will have to take.
This morning after I opened my eyes and crawled out of bed, I avoided logging on to the internet until after Biden was sworn in. When I did log on to read the latest news, I didn’t know what I’d find.
One: Trump leading an army of racist, fascists in a Civil War attempting to tear the country apart and become the country’s first dictator for life or …
Two: Biden as president with Trump “finally” gone from the recently fumigated White House with no appearance from of Trump’s fascists that mobbed the capital on January 6th.
When I saw it was #2, I breathed a sigh of relief. I could leave my weapon’s safe unopened and locked.
Diane FYI: This is from WAPO Daily 202. It’s excerpted from an interview with the new Poet Laureate who delivered her poem at the inauguration.
Knox is the Interviewer, Gorman is the Poet. All quoted below:
“Knox: There aren’t many spotlights brighter than a presidential inauguration. I know that many of your poems have strong political content. What’s your first political memory?
“Gorman: No one’s ever asked me that before! My first political memory? I would say it wouldn’t be anything like being at a protest or anything like that. It would be: When I was really young my mother would read me my Miranda Rights and make sure I knew them. My mom was not playing around.
“When you are a black child growing up in America, our parents have to have what’s called ‘the talk’ with us. Except it’s not about the birds and the bees and our changing bodies, it’s about the potential destruction of our bodies.
“My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with black skin in America, and that was my first awakening to the political climate I was stepping into.” END QUOTE
The astute replies to our resident Trump normalizer reminds me of something very important. We must not forget Trump. We must remember with fear what Trump and his Republican enablers and his neo-fascist supporters wrought on this country.
When Germany was defeated, someone was wise enough to figure out that it was not enough to say: “ok, Hitler’s gone, let’s not talk about him anymore”. Instead what people heard was “never forget”. Never forget how much damage the rise and enabling of someone as horrible as Hitler can cause. Never forget what happens when lies are promoted as truth, and truth as lies. Never forget what happens when people on the right and the left normalize propaganda and lies.
This country needs the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials to make public not what Trump did, but what those who were complicit did under cover of their lies. From the time they refused to even allow a vote on Merrick Garland to their encouraging a violent insurrection this month, there are many people whose actions should not be forgotten.
If we don’t do that now, I fear the next chance will be after an even worse version of Trump which could last a lot longer than 4 years.
NYC Thank you for remembering what Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland, and to Obama. CBK
NYCPSP,
Imagine if someone in Germany in 1936 had said, “let’s not talk about Hitler. Let’s just ignore him.”
Actually, they did that.
BIden has already done more for America than Trump did in four years.
……………………………………
President Biden signs 1st executive orders, targeting Trump policies on immigration, climate change, racial equity and COVID-19
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden moved swiftly to dismantle Donald Trump’s legacy on his first day in office, signing a series of executive actions that reverse course on immigration, climate change, racial equity and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new president signed the orders just hours after taking the oath of office at the Capitol, pivoting quickly from his pared-down inauguration ceremony to enacting his agenda. With the stroke of a pen, Biden halts construction on Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, ends the ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries, rejoins the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization and revokes the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, aides said.
The 15 executive actions amount to an attempt to rewind the last four years of federal policies with striking speed. Only two recent presidents signed executive actions on their first day in office — and each signed just one. But Biden, facing the debilitating coronavirus pandemic, a damaged economy and a riven electorate, is intent on demonstrating a sense of urgency and competence that he argues has been missing under his Republican predecessor.
“We’ll press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities — much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build and much to gain,” Biden, a Democrat, said in his inaugural address.
The new president paused his speech for what he called his first act as president — a moment of a silent prayer for the victims of the nation’s worst public health crisis in more than a century.
Biden has said getting a grip on the pandemic, which has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the U.S., is his top policy priority. On the list of presidential orders to be signed Wednesday was one putting in place a mask mandate on federal property and extending the federal eviction freeze. It will also create a federal office to coordinate a national response to the containing the virus and distributing the vaccine. Biden will also restore the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and defense, an office his predecessor had closed…
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-joe-biden-day-one-executive-order-20210120-k5uf6i427jfxvbburuzveqmtg4-story.html
WaPo:
On economic relief stemming from the pandemic, Biden plans to ask the Education Department to consider extending a freeze on both interest and principal payments for federal student loans until Sept. 30, while requesting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extend a moratorium on evictions that expires after this month to at least through March.
He will also ask three key agencies — the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development — to extend foreclosure moratoriums for federally backed mortgages under their purview through at least the end of March.
Another action will call on the Department of Homeland Security to continue an Obama-era initiative protecting “dreamers” from deportation and issuing them work permits as long as they qualified under the requirements laid out when the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, began in 2012. Biden will also end the national emergency over the border that Trump declared as a way to circumvent Congress when lawmakers would not grant him funding for his wall.
On racial equity issues, Biden plans to rescind the “1776 Commission” established by the Trump administration, which the outgoing president framed last year as a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth” about U.S. history but that the incoming administration says tries to erase the racial scars of America’s past.
He will announce actions on climate change on Jan. 27, health care on Jan. 28, immigration on Jan. 29, and international affairs and national security on Feb. 1.
Executive actions to be issued in coming days include revoking the ban on transgender people from serving in the military, as well as reversing the so-called global gag rule that blocks U.S. aid to organizations abroad that perform abortions or offer counseling on the procedure, Psaki said.
Trump issues one more pardon from Mar-a-Lago with minutes to spare — to ex-husband of Fox News host
On almost every Saturday night for the past four years former judge, Jeanine Pirro, has used her Fox News show to praise and defend President Donald Trump, frequently in a screaming rant. Pirro is close friends with the soon-to-be former president, so it surprised some that her ex-husband’s name was not on the list of 143 pardons and commutations Trump released overnight.
That list now stands at 144.
Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) Tweeted:
New: Trump has pardoned Al Pirro, who was convicted of tax fraud. Pirro has previously worked with Trump on real estate deals and is the ex-husband of Fox host Jeanine Pirro.
“Trumpism” is just reinvented Reaganism with added brutality
Jan. 20, 2021 2:54 pm
By Thom Hartmann
New Grifter Trump stole Trumpism, just like everything else in his life
The king is dead; long live the [new] king.*
With today’s transfer of power in Washington, DC, Trump isn’t dead, but the best hope for the future of America and the world is that his political movement does, in fact, die an ignominious death.
Trump, of course, didn’t create Trumpism; like pretty much everything else in his life, he stole it.
When Fred Koch poured his money into the John Birch Society to protest the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board decision in 1954, helping fund billboards across America proclaiming that Chief Justice Earl Warren must be impeached, the scar of racism that was etched into our nation at our founding entered a new turning of our political cycles.
Richard Nixon picked up that banner with his 1968 Southern Strategy, and in the 1980s Ronald Reagan burned it into our national soul with policy after policy designed to disenfranchise, deny education or jobs, and keep healthcare, food and housing assistance away from Black people.
Trump was marinated in racial hatred by his father, who was once arrested at a Klan rally, and he spent his young years marking “C” for “Colored” on his dad’s rental applications. As president, he turned white supremacy’s hatred, horror and brutality into a new official policy, using the tools of government to intentionally inflict as much pain and violence as possible on Hispanic refugees and their children seeking asylum from rape and murder.
Thus, at this very moment, the vile private, for-profit prison industry he poured billions into is still running modern-day concentration camps for non-white refugees, and thousands of children tonight will cry themselves to sleep not knowing if they’ll ever again see their parents.
When David Koch ran for President in 1980 on a platform of ending all free public education, giving Social Security to the big banks, banning unions, ending Medicare, and eliminating unemployment insurance, food stamps, and all forms of government assistance for those who’d fallen on hard times, he lost the election but his ideas were quickly picked up by Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.
Reagan even kicked his campaign off with a speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 3 civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964, then a very recent memory. His speech’s theme was “States’ Rights,” code for maintaining legal racial segregation in America for over a century.
As President, Reagan put a man who’d called for the end of the Education Department, Bill Bennett, in charge of that very department; Trump’s appointment of anti-public-schools crusader and billionaire Betsy DeVos to the same job was merely an echo of the 1980s policy positions of the party Reagan reinvented.
Bill Bennett would later restate the white supremacist policies of the 1950s in more modern, academic-sounding terms when, in 2006, he said, “If you wanted to reduce crime, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”
When Nancy Pelosi called him on it, he replied, “We’ve got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses.” Riiiight.
Trump putting Eugene Scalia, a lawyer who spent much of his life helping corporations crush or keep out unions, in charge of the Labor Department, was an echo of Reagan putting Ray Donovan, a businessman with a somewhat less radical past but still no advocate for unions, in the same position.
Trump putting Ryan Zinke in charge of the Interior Department, where he promptly began selling off federal lands for pennies on the dollar to mining and drilling cronies, was just an echo of Reagan appointing James Watt to the same job.
When asked why he’d so quickly despoil public lands, Watt said Reagan hired him to “undo 50 years of bad government” and that “my responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.”
It shouldn’t surprise anybody that Trump put a coal lobbyist in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, a military weapons lobbyist in charge of the Pentagon, a disgraced banker known as “The Foreclosure King” in charge of Treasury, and a Verizon lawyer/lobbyist in charge of the FCC. Reagan did largely the same.
He filled the senior ranks of department after department with lobbyists; after all, Saint Ronny told us that government was bad, so why not just take the opportunity to have some fun and make some profit looting the taxpayer’s lands, air, water and treasury?
Trumpism, it turns out, isn’t all that unique; Trump merely put a brutal and violent face on the putrid near-corpse of Reaganism. But retellings of Reaganism are still very much alive and well – and even revered – in today’s Republican Party, particularly among the Donor Class.
Reaganism/Trumpism isn’t dead yet.
President Joe Biden brings an opportunity for an American renewal, if he has the courage to stand up to what is still the GOP of Reagan, Bush and Trump.
In that, he’s going to need all of our help.
*The saying, in various forms, dates back to 1272, when Henry III died, leaving his throne to crusader Edward I, and has been used for hundreds of years in numerous countries to mark the transfer of royal power.
-Thom
OMG! White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is now holding her first daily briefing with reporters at 6PM CST.
Imagine a press secretary actually holding a press conference!! Miracles do happen.
I think Sarah Huckabee was there the last time there was a White House press conference.