As the country succumbed to hysteria, platitudes were exchanged. Just two weeks after pro-Trump protestors stormed the Capitol to protest the ceremonial confirmation of Joe Biden by Congress, Inauguration Day was marked by an intensely high-wire air of emotion and paranoia. The quiet and canned solemnity typical of news coverage of inauguration was replaced by a histrionic outpour of emotion from both liberal and conservative pundits alike. In an attempt to calm the turbulence of the moment, the incoming Biden administration emphasized a message of unity during the ceremony.
Despite a familiarly boring inauguration, a feeling of unresolved tension lingered over the stage and the largely empty expanse of onlookers in D.C. As I watched, a question persistently called out from the back of my mind: What work will be done to bridge the gap between opposing political beliefs in such a tense political environment? Who can blame the vast majority of people for not trusting a government unable to manage the economic and health crises before us?
There is an understandable exhilaration at the exit of Donald Trump from the office of the president. The past four years have been psychologically tolling for even the least politically engaged citizen. I felt a bit of relief myself, knowing the news cycle would not be consumed by Trump’s daily foibles. Yet something disturbed me about the day’s celebrations. Did everyone forget about Biden’s career before that day, championing the credit card industry and the expansion of the carceral state?
It is difficult not to think back to a campaign promise from then-candidate Biden at a June 2019 fundraiser for wealthy donors: if elected president “nothing would fundamentally change”. The fantasy of the Biden presidency is not one of reckoning with our country’s legacy of racism, as NPR reporter Rachel Martin and many others have suggested– otherwise we would have not elected the author of the 1994 Crime Bill and the Attorney General overseeing the second most overcrowded prison system in the country. What the country wants is to not be reminded of the atrocities committed both internationally and domestically by the State. We have accepted the premise that nothing will fundamentally change, that we will be locked in a forever war to destabilize regions economically advantageous to us and that we would be lucky if we received even the bare minimum of aid in the midst of our economic crisis.
Outside the spectacle of unity stood a battalion of armed National Guards ready to prevent another round of violence from pro-Trump forces, a reminder of how fragile and false these promises of nationwide spiritual healing were. While America may have gotten rid of Trump, we have done nothing to resolve the underlying conditions that allowed for his ascent. If the media spectacle of Inauguration Day has proven anything, it is that we have seemingly given up on looking for an end to our immiseration; we just want a drop of ether to delude us on our way out.
