Even now hearing the ceremonies, I’m looking forward to hearing some love, laughter and light-hearted banter coming from the people in the White House.
Mitch McConnell just made a joke that the President and Vice-President laughed at. There’s a lot more laughter already happening from everyone.
Until it was pointed out, I didn’t realize how somber the last administration was.
We have had people with competency and compassion ostensibly in charge (well, some of them) but so hobbled and interfered with that they were unable to manage public expectations and forced to watch individual state governors reject even basic precautionary guidance that the response was a black comedy of errors. Hopefully under Biden that will change–putting Dr. Anthony Fauci as the chief medical advisor to the President is certainly a positive step–but there is still a lot of mess to clean up, from behind schedule and possibly fraudulent vaccine deliveries to states not following any clear protocols on identifying their vaccination tiers, not to mention encouraging or enforcing all of the public health measures necessary to get the spread of contagion under control prior to enough people being vaccinated to really impact spread. There is a lot of elephant shit to clean up before they can start sweeping the stall.
Trump lashed out just fine with military force when it pleased him, and rarely with adequate consideration or consultation with military leaders to do so in an effective manner. Trump has long had a fascination with “the nuclear” even though he knows essentially nothing about them, and given that the Office of the President has plenary authority to arbitrarily order a nuclear launch without any check by any other branch of government, requiring only verification by a Senate-confirmed individual that the order is coming from the President, it is disconcerting that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump, who doesn’t even have enough respect for democratic norms to concede an election that he clearly lost, cajoled state election officials to “find” him necessary votes to overturn the election, and finally inveighed his fanatic followers to disrupt the certification of the election by invading the Capitol Building by force, would have access to that kind of power. Nor, frankly, should anyone else. Our “Launch On Warning” posture for nuclear deterrence is a relic of the Cold War that is no longer necessary and puts both friend and foe at risk that an accident or deliberate malicious action could result in a nuclear exchange which could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people.
Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell worked tirelessly to ram through a record number of appointments to the federal judiciary that had been open from the Obama Administration. They were open, by the way, not because Obama had no interest in filling these appointments, but because McConnell blocked the nominees in hope of being able to pack courts with conservative-leaning justices for decades to come, and he was highly successful at that. The Senate Judiciary Committee is going to have a pretty quiet decade or more after the rush hour slam of the last four years.
I’m mostly relieved that Biden knows better than to think he is a “very stable genius” in all areas of governance and has already indicated his interest and willingness to seek out actual experts to advise him and run the executive departments. I suspect he’ll also be willing to share responsibility with Vice President Harris in the same way that President Obama did with him, and foster public confidence in her as his successor, as well as shore up what bipartisan bridges still remain. I’m hopefully he will make renewing strategic partnerships with allies and agreements with more obstructive powers critical while turning the intelligence and defense apparatus on the actual threats posed by Russia and China, and also take a more balanced approach to relations with the Middle East. I would like to see a forward-looking energy policy and an actual plan to revitalize both our physical infrastructure as well as critical public services such as education, basic health care, and dealing with unemployment and homelessness. But absolutely the first thing he has to focus on is getting the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic under control and bolstering our infectious disease infrastructure and surveillance so that we can deal with changes like another, more virulent strain emerging.
But quite frankly, just having regular White House Press Briefings and official interviews that aren’t a stream of fabrications, accusations, insults, and advertisements for businesses of the family of the president will be a refreshing start. I do kind of hope that they’ll bring back Sean Spicer once or twice just for the contrast and/or comic relief. I kinda miss that guy; he was just so helpless at running a press conference, it was kind of like watching a beagle puppy trying to climb stairs. #LetHimMisspeak
Stranger
I am looking forward to waking up each morning without my first thought being, “What fresh hell did this asshole foist onto us in the middle of the night?”.
I am also happy that I get to see a Presidential family that actually loves each other, instead of a bunch of grifting grifters that like to grift.
Yeah, Trump was a symptom, but a particularly ugly one. It’s just beginning.
Just watched the first press briefing. At the end, a bunch of the reporters said, ‘thanks, Jen.’ I’m relieved not to have to hear reporters screaming at the press secretary in an attempt to try to get their questions answered. I’m relieved that the press briefing was calm and didn’t leave me wondering what in the world the press secretary was talking about.
Ajit Pai is gone. I’m relieved. Maybe net neutrality has a chance.
Biden has officially canceled the Trump withdrawal from WHO.
We are once again part of the World Health Organization, and I do believe that the money for WHO has been freed-up.
Booyah, as per our previous communiques.
There’s no way I had enough good jokes for another 4 years. Granted, Trump was an endless fount of comic inspiration, but I just don’t think I had it in me.
Of course it’s not over. It’s never over (and it didn’t start when Trump took office). It can’t be over until we either evolve into a better species or kill ourselves off.
But I’m starting to think that we just got a vaccination. A damn dangerous vaccination, delivered in the form of a large shot of live virus. But the immune system seems to have responded by kicking into high gear. A temporary response, of course, and the virus will mutate; but we’ve got a chance for now; and that improves our chances for the next now.
Great analogy, never really thought of it in that way but it makes perfect sense. I also agree that we need to remain vigilant, but at least the end of the tunnel is not completely dark.
PS: I’ll be stealing your analogy to warn friends who might get too complacent.
It’s definitely not over, but I’m the most cautiously optimistic as I’ve been in a while. I think one of the problems I was seeing was the idea that we had nothing to worry about, that our institutions would just somehow hold up and that an attack on democracy was an overblown fear. I think the period from November 4 to January 6th shook us to our core, but it also maybe shook us to our senses and woke us up. I was wondering if/when that moment would arrive. Maybe, just maybe, it finally did. There’s at least an opportunity for some good to come from this disaster.
But as you say, this is not over. We have to be vigilant. There’s a pandemic and major upheaval, and it won’t be long before the right wing will spin new controversies and see itself as the real victim. We have to be ready. Most of all, we have to succeed. Government has to succeed. We have to show people that democracy can work and that it can deliver results that improves lives.
Steal away. I’m just glad it made sense to somebody other than me!
I’m relieved that we are immediately rejoining initiatives that are clearly to our long term benefit (World Health Organization, Paris Climate Accords).
I’m relieved that someone that actually seems to give a rat’s ass about public health will be getting after hammering out a workable national response to COVID-19.
I’m relieved that the anti-democratic forces that Trumpism represents remain fragmented, incompetent and a decided minority, although I’m not taking any bets regarding the next few years.
No, I think Trump’s done. He can’t get himself elected. He needs the Republican party.
But the Republican party doesn’t need Trump. Even as a figurehead, he was a liability rather than an asset.
By 2024, the Republican party will have rigged the primary and convention rules to make sure Trump is locked out. They’ll pick a candidate who has a pretty face and will do what the party leaders tell him.
I feel it began several decades ago. But I agree Trump was just a symptom. The Republican party organization that put Trump in office is still around. And they’re already making plans about putting the next guy in power.
I don’t have to check my phone first thing in the morning to see if we’re at war.
This is what Republican politicians want people to think. It’s a fiction. The Republican party is not a collection of grey haired politicians and Billionaires, it’s the 75M people who have gleefully guzzled the propaganda and hate. The leadership will see him as an existential threat and try to marginalize him, they will fail. His acolytes will support him and his kin for the foreseeable future. The GOP will be forced to choose between fracturing into 2 minority parties and sucking it up and aligning behind Trump again.
Even if Trump isn’t back a clone will arise, probably from his family. Because Trump left the country in such a bad state, and has laid a thousand landmines we don’t yet know about, Biden’s term will be fraught and the idiots on TV will pin the result on him. In 2 years, we’ll lose the House because of the massive failures in state races this cycle ahead of redistricting. Harris will fail to hold the White House.
It’s gonna be bleak unless we imprison every single one of them. But, in the name of “unity” we won’t. Review your German history.
and barking.
Woof!
I do not understand where people get the idea that Trump is a mastermind. There’s been no evidence of that in the last four years. Hell, there’s been no evidence of that in the last seventy years. Trump is exactly what he looks, sounds, and acts like: a fuck-up.
I’m happy that the big boogeyman has gone.
Australia has always been a very liberal electorate, and I’m sure the US would call our conservatives radical commies!
Except our current conservative government had watched the Trump administration veeery closely, and had taken many leaves out of his playbook. Scott Morrison, our PM, had aspirations to be the Trump of Aus.
But now that Trump has been scuttled off the stage with his tail between his ample thighs, I fucking hope that Morrison takes heed.