A Slight Turning Point, Maybe

Dear Reader, let me take you back to the halcyon days of Jan. 20, 2017

In those brief days between Donald slouching into office and his first major 140-character attempts at governance, most of us were aware that we’d accidently elected a Stephen King character to office, but we didn’t know exactly how terrified we should be, on a scale of “Cujo” to “Randall Flagg.” Then, a week into his tragicomic farce, he issued the now-infamous travel ban. That set the tone for the next four years, and elevated the threat level of this man from “creepy loner who lives down the block” to “Why is that man following me through town?” It was definitely a defiant move against morality, legality, decency, and logic (it’s damning and telling that he didn’t issue a ban against Saudi nationals)(not that I’d support that, but it would at least issue some sort of standards to the nightmarish corruption and brutality he eagerly ushered in). And, yeah, most of it was removed by courts or made unenforceable, but it really set the tone of xenophobia, bigotry, and open hatred that characterized Donald better than any of his other cruelties.

And then, magically, things went from “disastrous” to “genocide” in the space of four years. And, I feel we do have to call the deaths of 400000 Americans a genocide, because that’s certainly how we would refer to it if we saw that number coming out of, say, Indonesia, or even the UK.

All of my Canadian and European friends who know I tend to vote leftist (that’s American politics, in any industrialized country, I’d be a moderate conservative)(in France, I’d be downright regressive) why I’m so thrilled about moderate near-liberals like Harris and Biden getting elected.

I’m not. Most of my fellow communists at the Central Committee aren’t overjoyed. Most Americans aren’t overjoyed either. I have to explain it to my more-progressive unAmerican friends that, at the moment, America is like someone who just got out of a physically abusive relationship. The Biden-Harris Administration is like the he rebound place-holder relationship after a physically abusive relationship. We’re not under any illusions they’re going to be our last, great love; they’re just here to help us get on our feet and staunch the bleeding. And, even though I know we have to keep up this sort of pressure on the current Administration in order to get even slight reforms, it does feel like we can take our hands off of the wound for a few seconds.

I tried to explain to a British friend exactly what made Donald turn from “bizarre one-term president” (we’ve had plenty of those) to “hostis humani generis” in America is that bizarre after-party melt-down that started at Four Seasons Landscaping ($20000 a day is way too much to pay R. Giuliani as an attorney, but $20000 a day for an Emmy-winning sketch comedy act isn’t a bad price), and ended with the Capitol Siege. I have a hard time explaining why that incident is so fundamentally wrong to my American eyes that my Schengen-area friends don’t seem to comprehend. I think it’s because one of the great, unspoken values of our culture is that we are taught to be magnanimous in victory, and gracious in defeat. We have entire grade-school athletic events and leagues based on the premise of instilling a sense of fairness and sportsmanship. I will admit that far too often, we fail to live up to these lofty standards, but at least we know they exist. The Capitol Siege trampled upon that ideal (along with a woman carrying a Gadsden Flag). Sure, we lose and we may pout, but we rarely try to strangle the referee, the other team, and all the witnesses and make off with the trophy. That’s why we were very glad to see Hibbert Drupf flee DC at an early hour on Wednesday; we were paying attention to the last four years, and we knew how even slight victories embolden Roland Biff from “dangerous” to “monstrous.” Biden taking the office wasn’t a major step towards a central planning committee, it was throwing out a man who would absolutely love a paramilitary death squad to solidify his junta’s rule.

So, you can imagine my absolute shock at seeing Amanda Gorman reciting a superb poem (she’ll get a Nobel Prize some day). I had to check my pulse to see that I wasn’t having a heart attack when Lady Gaga showed up in a Mockingjay-inspired outfit. Then J. Lo sang “Let’s Get Loud” at the inauguration. Then, the Biden Administration started issuing Executive Orders to reverse Trump’s most-reviled policies (some of them; we’ll repeal the yacht tax rebate later)(yes, that’s now a thing). Then we had a real, honest-to-god press conference in which everyone was noticeably sober, there were no open hostilities or lies, and, while it wasn’t exactly the most-informative press conference, there was a subtlety almost worthy of C.J. Cregg. I replayed that question about Biden’s position on Russia over and over, certainly. And we were told that there would be regular, daily press briefings, like in the good old days of Bush and Clinton.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still under no illusions about the need to continue to keep up the pressure on all our politicians, everywhere, and remind them that a return to the status quo of 2015 is absolutely not enough. But, at the same time, a return to 2015 would be a massive shift away from that time when Americans caged immigrant children in child prisons.

Again, I can’t pretend that Biden’s going to be good enough in the long-term, but we aren’t clenching our teeth all day, and waking up in cold sweats after nightmares about politicians tear-gassing churches. Apparently, we do, collectively, have standards. It’s a shame that the bar is set at “tear gassing clergy and openly instigating lynch mobs,” but it is kind of reassuring to see we do have standards. In the meantime, before we have the next round of mid-terms, it seems that Biden is very serious about his implicit campaign promise to heal this country’s wounded psyche. If the preview the Trump Administration could be found in his disgusting line about “American carnage” in his rambling inaugural address, we got an insight into what this Administration aspires to be Monday night when the President-elect (now actual President) gave a brief speech at a memorial for COVID victims. Many other writers have commented that this is the first time in four years that we’ve had any sort of open acknowledgment of the very real existential perils we face, and the costs we’ve already paid. Donald spoke of American carnage and immediately issued bans on filthy foreigners coming to our delightful land. Biden tacitly encouraged us to start the grieving process, and issued an eviction moratorium. Again, this is all the bare minimum level of governance, but we just had a man in office who literally-not-figuratively actually personally attacked Americans. After that, basic human decency and empathy is a solid step in the right direction.