Oath Keeper Zero

"Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another. But we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people… The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs.”  Donald Trump, January 20, 2017

"We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you … the people.” Bane, The Dark Knight Rises

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein)

Let it not be said that Donald Trump never kept a promise.

     Four years and 400,000 needless death ago today, Donald Trump delivered a narcoleptic inaugural address as the skies, fittingly, opened up on him (something else he lied about). Much of the nation wasn't paying attention but for those of us who were, his hot air was supposed to be a paean to law enforcement who were in the process of making 217 arrests around the Capitol that day of people who weren't interested in overthrowing the government.

     I and several others had made note of Trump seeming to lift part of his speech from Bane's speech from The Dark Knight Rises, especially when he was in the process of sacking Gotham City through the mindless mob to distract everyone else from his efforts to take Wayne Enterprises' potentially destructive energy device to use as a nuclear weapon against that same city and its citizens.

     What none of us thought or predicted at the time was that when Trump was balefully droning on about the virtues of law enforcement, it wasn't a dog whistle to law enforcement at all but to his base. If Donald Trump displayed one infallible gift even approaching stable genius level, it was his flawless appraisal and ability to exploit his red-toothed base that got him onto that Inaugural stage. In the passage above, Trump had actually said with a straight face about the establishment protecting itself at the expense of the people and he promised to give that "back to you, the people."

     Have any among us thought back to the final scenes in The Dark Knight Rises after the people of Gotham sack their own city, with hooligans and criminals like the Scarecrow taking over the judiciary and holding kangaroo courts and overrunning the police and eventually holding them captive in the city's tunnel system?

     If not, why? The same thing happened just a fortnight ago on January 6th. Trump had essentially ordered his minions to march on the Capitol and to "take it back". His lawyer Rudy Giuliani shouted about the necessity of "trial by combat." Less than a half hour later, news videographers were shooting footage of hooligans and criminals overrunning both the Senate and House while lawmakers cowered or were on the run, official Congressional documents being rifled through and even copied as they called for Speaker Pelosi's head and to "hang Mike Pence." The police, as we also know, were overpowered and one of them was killed. Another committed suicide the following Saturday.

     Those events have long been congealed into history, one of the most shameful parts of American history, events that were repeatedly mentioned in Biden's inauguration speech at noon today (Tellingly, Biden was actually inaugurated at just after 11:45 this morning, as if we literally couldn't wait to get rid of Trump and his stench of fascism). What happened on January 6th was Trump's wink and nod to his people that some time, it would be the day of the dog. He'd kept his promise to them.

A Tale of Two Cities and Two Plagues 

"The Presidential Inaugural Committee has installed some 191,500 U.S. flags of varying sizes on a swath of the long, grassy park to represent the American people who cannot attend Biden's inauguration. The public art display, which covers the National Mall from 3rd Street to 13th Street, is illuminated by 56 pillars of light and includes flags for every U.S. state and territory." Morgan Winsor, ABC News.

By far, the most arresting and heart-breaking visual of this unique inauguration was the field of flags on the National Mall. The security forces tasked with keeping the inauguration safe had decided after the riot to close off the National Mall. But leaving all that real estate empty would have looked rather embarrassing for the incoming administration. So, someone came up with the ingenious idea of filling it with flags representing the lives of those who couldn't attend the inauguration due to COVID.

     As ABC News pointed out, despite them taking up 10 streets from 3rd to 13th Streets, they could only fit 191,500 flags on the huge Mall, far short of even half the 400,000 Americans who'd died in this ongoing pandemic. Whether it was intended to or not, it served as a damning, if vastly incomplete indictment of Donald Trump's palpably deliberate failure to meaningfully confront and combat a virus that had the temerity to arrive on our shores in an election year.

     The newly-minted President Biden and his entire administration will have to hit the ground not just running but sprinting at breakneck speed for its and, literally, our lives. Trump left this new administration with a political, geopolitical and medical Augean stables to clean up. And those of us living in the epicenter of Planet Reality will justly be cynical at least to a point as its chances for appreciable success. We've still vaccinated far less than 10% of the nation even though the Pfizer vaccine rollout began over a month ago even with the addition of the Moderna vaccine. Just six days ago, only 11.1 million Americans had gotten the vaccine, or just over 3% of the U.S. population.

     New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio just announced his city will run out of vaccine doses the day after tomorrow, even though just today a NYT op-ed by three public health experts outlined a plan to get 100,000,000 doses to 100,000,000 Americans in 100 days. This also happens to be President Biden's plan and, considering the supply chain, delivery system and manufacturing capability of Pfzier's and Moderna's third party contractors can meet demand with an adequate supply, it seems to be a workable plan, if a bit ambitious.

     Then, there's also the timely administration of the doses. It seems mad that New York City will run out in 48 hours or less while nationally, we've only administered 39% of the delivered doses. This is just one of the many Trump-era incompetencies with which the Biden-Harris administration will have to tackle. They have to fight both the pandemic and the other plague that Trump left behind, that of toxic politicization. I do not envy them either task.

     Biden's inaugural speech sounded at times like a tired boilerplate campaign speech. He stressed time and again about how we all have to work together to achieve great things, to come together as united Americans. And all that on its face sounds great until one actually opens their eyes and uses their grey cells for a minute and remember that just under two weeks before, a screaming mob was swaggering through the halls of Congress largely unopposed for 41 minutes, smearing fecal matter and ransacking and trashing congressional offices and calling for the heads of elected officials.

     Biden's always more willing to work with hard line conservatives than hard line liberals and, if he wants to meaningfully address the divisions, he'd be best served by going into this job with his eyes wide open and stop this naive delusion of collegiality with a party that had aided and abetted the last administration that had put those 191,500 flags on the Mall and had killed 100,000 just since December, the same one that had called for the Capitol to be sacked for the first time in 207 years. Biden needs to seriously listen to the political faction that actually does have a vested interest in working with his administration.