It's okay to feel hope

[babylonsister]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22240597/joe-biden-inauguration-president-2021-hope


It’s okay to feel hope
Joe Biden’s inaugural address showed America how to move on after four years of Donald Trump.
By Zack Beauchamp@[e-mail] Jan 20, 2021, 2:30pm EST


Joe Biden became the president of the United States amid a series of overlapping crises. More than 400,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19. The current economic downturn is the worst since the Great Depression. There is an ongoing, serious threat of far-right violence after the attack on the Capitol. And there’s a Republican Party that seems unwilling to work with Biden on fixing any of it.

None of that has changed now that Biden has officially assumed the presidency. And yet, watching Biden’s inaugural and listening to his first address, it’s hard not to feel a real measure of hope.

“Today, we celebrate not the triumph of a candidate but a cause: the cause of democracy,” Biden said. In a typical inauguration, these words would be pro forma. This year, in the wake of the storming of the Capitol, they felt profound.

“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured,” the new president declared. He was painting a picture of the America we want: not the one we have, but maybe one we could, one day.

Biden’s call for a better country was paired with a clear-eyed recognition of what exactly it was that got us in such a bad way in the first place: not mere political disagreement, but a resurgence of illiberal forces that have haunted America since its founding — and, at times, triumphed over democratic ideals.

“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured,” Biden said.

snip//

The Trump era gave us plenty of reason to believe that the worst and most cynical possibility was also the most likely. Yet millions of Americans mobilized throughout that, defending causes ranging from women’s bodily autonomy to health care access to freedom from police violence.

As this new administration begins, such Americans can move from defense to offense. They can look down the slope, scanning for paths that might reach a beautiful pasture.

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R