Buckle up: It could get even rougher
Wednesday’s inauguration comes at a time of national peril, prompting unparalleled precautions. The capital city will bristle with arms – troops at street corners and on the National Mall while Capitol Hill, the site of the inaugural, promises to be an armed fortress.
The marauding nihilists who ransacked the Capitol in the name of Donald Trump have been forewarned: stay away.
Whether they will is anyone’s guess. A number of commentators, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 madness, advanced the notion that the spark of insurrection, lit by none other than the president of the United States himself, has flamed out.
Others opined that the Capitol invasion was merely warmup; worse was yet to come: the lawless disruptors were just getting started. A second civil war was in the offing.
All of which has echoes from the past: Edward G. Roddy, a Uniontown newspaper editor around the time of the Lincoln inaugural in 1861, wrote, “Amidst the civilizations of the 19th century, we are on the brink of ruin, despotism and destruction.”
Roddy, I hasten to add, was anti-Lincoln and pro-South. He was on the wrong side of history. Singularly unimpressed by future history, Roddy was a Democrat.
The Republican Lincoln became president under a canopy of guns and a hint of violence. He entered the Capitol for his swearing-in through a specially built tunnel to thwart would-be assassins.
Then, as now, the issue was the future of democracy. (Slavery triggered the Civil War; it was not its first casualty, however.)
From first to last, Lincoln stood against the notion that the South could leave the Union following an election that their side lost. Secession under any and all circumstances, especially this one, Lincoln stated, was antithetical to the Constitution and to every founding principle.
The consequence of secession would be disastrous, for “whoever rejects (majority rule), does, of necessity fly to anarchy and despotism.”
Anarchy. That’s what was on display on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, as rioters kicked, punched, and stormed their way into the citadel of American democracy at the exact moment Congress was lawfully certifying the Biden victory.
Anarchy bellies up to despotism. Enter Donald Trump.
Long before the 6th, President Trump was strutting like an autocratic peacock. But it took his election defeat to bring out the full scope of his authoritarian nature.
Thus: the president’s greatest offense against the United States and American democracy were not the words he uttered on Jan. 6 to his insurrectionist soulmates – as abusive of democracy as they were – but his constant barrage over the weeks about a “stolen” election, his fraudulent claim that he won a landslide victory, and that he was cheated by Democrats and Republicans alike.
In other words, the Big Lies he told time and again and the attempts he repeatedly made to undermine the faith people must have in one another if this free American government is to work at all.
We have on our hands a crisis of faith. The question is: Is Joe Biden up to the challenge? Are we up to the challenge?
On Inauguration Day 1933, the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, declared that the “only thing” Americans had “to fear was fear itself.”
Today, it’s a whole lot trickier precisely because Americans fear one another.
Is it comforting to know, three days before he takes the oath of office, that Joe Biden appears unafraid? The answer is a resounding yes.
But so much is out of his hands. Nothing will get the country back on track faster, will lift the gloom sooner, than early legislative successes by the Biden administration. For instance, quick passage by Congress of the $1.9 trillion economic and COVID-19 relief package the president-elect proposed late last week.
A dispute over the size of the package, deep partisan divisions, and a possible Trump impeachment trial in the Senate stand in the way, however.
Biden has pledged substantial help for beleaguered family and business budgets. He has promised 100 million coronavirus vaccinations in the first 100 days of his administration.
These are tall orders.
Still, they pale in comparison to healing America’s ravaged soul.
Remember, it took four bloody years to get on the other side of disunion. It took seven years for the country to fully emerge from the Great Depression.
We should expect many trying days ahead.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book, “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.