Wishes for the Inauguration

Sandy Levinson

Assume that my heartfelt plea immediately below for a coalition of Democrats and honorable Republicans to use the electoral college to bring forth a potential third-candidate who would be chosen by the House as our 45th President goes nowhere (which, of course, is highly probable).  So, frankly, what should we wish for on January 20.  One possibility is a day in which we celebrate our tradition of peaceful transfers of power by assembling, physically or through television, to watch Donald Trump take the oath of office from a beaming John Roberts, and then enjoy the Inaugural Parade, which will, no doubt, be the very best in our history given its arrangement by the Trump family.  The other is a day in which we see members of the armed forces lining every street of our nation's capital and the boycott of the Inaugural ceremony, such it is, by all honorable Democrats and Republicans in protest against the outrageous selections our sociopathic president will have made not only for the Cabinet, which, after all, is subject to Senate confirmation, but for his ever-more-monarchical court that requires no Senate confirmation (and whose members, indeed, are free from having to testify before Congress--so much for accountability), including, of course, the position of national security advisor.  Ideally, of course, there would also be a sleety rain that could be interpreted, for those so inclined, as Heaven's verdict on a Trump presidency.

I was, frankly, surprised that the 2001 Inauguration was so peaceful.  But one reason is that, for all of the justified outrage over Bush v. Gore, a truly abominable decision, I did not personally fear the Bush presidency, at least on the basis of what I knew at the time, in a way that I am in abject fear of a sociopathic president.  George W. Bush was a reasonably competent right-of-center Governor of Texas.  I spent much of 1999-2000, when I was visiting at NYU, explaining to my northeastern friends that it was New York City who had elected fascist mayor, whereas Bush was merely right-of-center and not, for example, a threat to basic civil liberties as Giuliani was (even before September 11) and remains.  As readers of this blog know, I ended up as a militant (though decidedly non-violent) opponent of George W. Bush, but that was largely a result of his being captured by the truly malevolent Dick Cheney and his minions.  So perhaps it was easily explicable that Democrats would be good sports about the loss of the presidency and, indeed, work with Bush, as Ted Kennedy did, to help him achieve his domestic agenda (and therefore at the same time aid his prospects for re-election in 2004).  2016 is not 2000.  And January 2017 should not replicate January 2001.  The whole world should realize that we are NOT the "United States of America," but, rather, a truly divided country, many (perhaps even most) of whose members are truly frightened of what may be on the horizon and wish to do nothing to "normalize" it by treating Donald Trump as a truly legitimate President whose inauguration should be a day for coming together.
Posted 11:42 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]