Well, alrighty, then—first Friday in the Biden administration. Yay!
Yesterday
I was talking with colleagues and realized that four years previously to the
day I was marching
in the streets of downtown DC, along with 497,465 of my closest friends.
But today I’m thinking more about dancing in the street.
So here are Martha and the Vandellas, singing it.
Let us collectively exhale.
And
when I say “us”, I mean the entire world. We have a President who understands
that we are part of a global network of nations; who doesn’t act out his every
whim and doesn’t care whom he labels with pre-teen disparagements; who knows
how to govern; who has promised to be the President for all Americans,
not just the ones (81 million though we be) who voted for him.
We
have a Vice President who brings the perspective of the 51% of us who are
female, the 13% of us who are Black, the 6% of us who are Asian and the 12% of
us who are Californian. There are no flies on this woman.
They understand—as
much as individuals can—the challenges that face us in the miasma left by the
Chaos Monkey, and they are ready to do the necessary to control the pandemic, bring
aid to the economically devastated, rebuild our alliances across the globe,
restore humanity to our government and serve justice.
I can
tell this from the Inauguration they staged yesterday, which was utterly devoid
of bombast and bloviation, but which abounded in purpose and, I believe, joy. I was ugly-crying starting with the firefighter signing the Pledge of Allegiance. The choice of Amanda Gorman as the inauguration poet was absolutely spot on. And Biden's address was precisely what the nation and the world needed to hear.
That’s
what we’ve been missing—joy.
So
together now: breathe in, breathe out and feel joy.
And so, four years later, we have adults in the room.
I thought and thought how to mark the morning of
Inauguration Day 2021, and here’s the best I could come up with.
Back in the last century, when I found myself riveted by a feature story in WaPo, inevitably when I looked back at the byline, it was by Ken Ringle. That guy could write the living daylights out of a story. They sent him to cover the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings and he wrote about the aging airborne soldiers who had to fast-talk their way through military concerns in order to reenact their jump into Normandy.
I loved every story he wrote, and was desolated
when he took early retirement in one of WaPo’s pre-Bezos cost-cutting sweeps.
Recently, I’ve noticed that every time there’s an
utterly transfixing photo of Cadet Bonespurs, it’s been taken by Jabin Botsford. That guy gets the
money shot with staggering regularity—a perfect angle at exactly the right
moment to capture the seething bile under that gravelly orange skin. We have
been blessed to have him assigned to the White House to document this corrupt presence.
I’m not posting any of his Bonespurs shots because I will not give that grifter the Klout.
Oh, okay: one:
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr., day in the United States. The third Monday in January has been a federal holiday since 1986; I suppose that’s another line item on the grievance list of White supremacists. Boo hoo.
In two days, we’ll kick Cadet Bonespurs out of
the White House and Moscow Mitch will step down as Senate Majority Leader. This
will take place in a city that is being patrolled by 20,000 National Guardsmen,
as well as by District, Maryland and Virginia cops, armed and armored (unlike
the US Capitol Police on the 6th). Because the insurrectionists have
vowed to return on Wednesday with their guns.
All 50 state capitals are also gearing up to
defend against these whackjobs in this weirdest of codas to 2020. Because they’ve
been threatened, too.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past
week—I haven’t seen this kind of thing since, I guess, Belfast in 1994. And
much of my thinking goes like this: we are facing this militarized presence to
protect our government from domestic terrorists; seems to me like either way we
go on this, we are completely fucked.
Well, but today is Gratitude Monday, so back to
King. In March of 1965, he was one of the thousands who marched from Selma to
Montgomery; when they reached the Alabama capital, he gave an address that resonates
with me particularly strongly today. He began:
“Last
Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk from Selma,
Alabama. We have walked through desolate valleys and across the trying hills.
We have walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways.
Some of our faces are burned from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some
have literally slept in the mud. We have been drenched by the rains. Our bodies
are tired and our feet are somewhat sore.
“But
today as I stand before you and think back over that great march, I can say, as
Sister Pollard said—a seventy-year-old Negro woman who lived in this community
during the bus boycott—and one day, she was asked while walking if she didn’t
want to ride. And when she answered, ‘No,’ the person said, ‘Well, aren’t you
tired?’ And with her ungrammatical profundity, she said, ‘My feets is tired,
but my soul is rested.’ And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our
feet are tired, but our souls are rested.
“They
told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get
here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are
here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama
saying, ‘We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around.’’
King enumerated continuing goals for marchers—segregated
housing, segregated schools, poverty and ballot boxes. The latter are mentioned
several times, because they are the keys that unlock all the rest. Then he
served notice to all the White folks calling for the 1965 version of “unity”
that the kind of unity they want—Black folks kept in their place—is not in the
cards.
“The
only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the
dignity and worth of all of God’s children. The only normalcy that we will
settle for is the normalcy that allows judgment to run down like waters, and
righteousness like a mighty stream. The only normalcy that we will settle for
is the normalcy of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of
justice.
“And
so as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed
to this struggle and committed to nonviolence. I must admit to you that there are
still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering in
many of the black belt counties of Alabama, many areas of Mississippi, many
areas of Louisiana. I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting
for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith
that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright
tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions.”
And
here we get to the part that I take to heart:
“I
know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘How
long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and
drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will
wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and
communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign
supreme among the children of men?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will the radiant
star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked
from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will
justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’
“I
come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however
frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will
rise again.’
“How
long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’
How
long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’’
And
this is what I’m holding on to today:
“How
long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
toward justice.”
I am the most impatient person you will ever know. And seeing the events of the past four years distilled into the horrors of the past two weeks has sent me up the walls. I’m infuriated by 95-year-old Nazis claiming the infirmities of age as a defense against standing trial for war crimes. I have been flipping out at the pardons and medals handed out by Bonespurs like party favors. It took way, way too long for Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić to appear at The Hague. I want every damned MAGAt who showed up armed and maskless at any state capitol tried for attempted manslaughter. Having King remind me that—even if I do not live to see it—no lie lives forever and the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice brings peace to my soul.
My soul needs that peace, and I am grateful for
it today, this week and this year. We definitely have difficult days ahead of
us and we have many miles to go. Let us all keep our eyes on truth and justice as we march.
