Free at Last

Shared Sentiments

Lots of folks are sharing similar sentiments about inauguration day. A college friend emailed: “I can’t tell you how many people said to me today that it felt like the tension level just went down everywhere around them. I think we’ve all been living with the nerve endings on the outside of our bodies for four years  I look forward to better, healthier, more generous times.” Amen.

A commenter from a previous A Promised Land post:

It’s a new day.

The fog is thinning.

The air is smelling so fresh now.

I can breathe!

I will sleep well tonight.

An Australian friend texted, “I hope you are smiling again at long last.” Indeed. And crying at times, but tears of joy and relief.

We now have a president who is a normal human being, trying to solve rather than exploit our problems. Someone who heeds science, evidence, facts. We no longer live in Bizarro World.

Chris Wallace of Fox News, recalling 60 years of inaugurations dating back to John F. Kennedy’s, called Biden’s speech “the best inaugural address I ever heard.”  I agree. It was eloquent, down to earth and grounded in both the harsh challenges we face and the high hopes he holds.

If you click that Wallace link, you’ll find that his words praising Biden’s focus on truthfulness could be heard as an admonition to his own network.

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman is dynamite.

Celebrating America

If you haven’t watched yesterday evening’s post-inauguration special, Celebrating America, (starting at about 17:55 of this link), please consider doing so. The show kicked off with one of Bruce Springsteen’s best, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” and its oh so apt lines:

Yeah, leave behind your sorrows, let this day be the last

Well, tomorrow there’ll be sunshine and all this darkness past

The production had so many other highlights…well, everything was a highlight.

But if I had to pick just two favorites, one would be Demi Lovato singing the beautiful Bill Withers classic, “Lovely Day” – partly because it certainly was such a day. But the clip also features medical personnel/heroes singing along in unison with her, and shots of Joe and Jill Biden watching them from the Oval Office, with their grandson in his arms.

The other favorite would be Tyler Hubbard and Tim McGraw singing “Undivided,” which frames faith, patriotism, tolerance and unity in terms that could appeal to country music fans, as well as all of us. As an indication of the diversity that can unite rather than divide, they’re introduced by Jamaican-American critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay, the first person to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the United States.

In some ways, this was George W. Bush’s finest hour. The very fact of his attending the inauguration and celebration lent bipartisan power to the proceedings, especially since Biden’s predecessor so predictably, pettily skipped town.

The star of the show was Abraham Lincoln. Since the live parts of the production were filmed in or in front of his memorial, his spirit imbued the proceedings.

A Virtual Passage to India

During the day, a couple of Indian TV stations interviewed me about the inauguration. From the questions they posed and the fine fellow guests they’d selected, I was pleased to see that the two outlets appreciate the job Biden faces and the mess he’d been left by his anti-democratic predecessor. India unfortunately faces its own autocratic challenges.

To illustrate for one interviewer the way that many people here feel about our change in presidents, I explained that one of our greatest Americans, Martin Luther King, Jr., had drawn inspiration from the great Indian Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings about tolerance, nonviolence and equality. I did so as a lead-in to citing Dr. King’s historic 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech and its closing lines:

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

The context is so different from today. And it’s sobering to recall that the freedom Dr. King sought remains so elusive for so many Americans.

But as I explained to my Indian interlocutor, the words reflect one key aspect of our new reality anyway: After being burdened for four years by the hate, spite, ignorance and arrogance of President Biden’s predecessor, we can finally, proudly say:

Free at last.

[Hat tip: GB, MvA, AJ]