notes on inauguration day

"We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

of such a terrifying hour

but within it we found the power

to author a new chapter."

-Amanda Gorman, "The Hill We Climb"

As a child that grew up in the late 70's/ early 80's, I always felt like history, more than just by definition, was something that would always be in former tense--that the country and its struggles, its wars, its battles were something that were firmly in the past.  We had fought for independence, fought to abolish slavery, to establish things like labor laws and social programs that now made our lives better as we knew them.  Maybe more like history was a done deal--that all that had been done had been done in service to being a better country, and if you believed the hype, the best country in the world (which as a kid who knew nothing about the world outside its borders, you'd readily believe.) We would stand every day and recite the pledge of allegiance, by rote, not one of us really thinking about the actual words or our place as Americans.  

During those years, our wars were in the past for the most part ,despite minor skirmishes that were typically interventions that, in theory and propaganda,  were to help make other countries as great as ours. When war came, with Gulf War No. 1, it was a fast success.  My mother brought home buttons a co-worker was selling emblazoned with "Operation Desert Storm", and outline of Iraq, and a flag. I wore it proudly on my jean jacket all that year and into the next. In the 90's, things happened, but they seemed like footnotes between "history" and "everydayness"--Clinton blowjobs, domestic terror, school shootings.  Not until 9/11 did something strike with any sort flame at being an important moment.  After that, much of the 2000's would have been only slight highs & lows in the history books-our first Black President, welcome progressive legislation, a number of natural and manmade disasters. the rise of the extreme right in the dank corners of the internet.

Democracy, all along,  seemed like a given. Like the only way a society could function, would function, barring a few autocratic holdovers on further shores. The world seemed just, or at least to be getting there, any remaining rough spots just left to be smoothed over. Of course, this was inaccurate-- the teeming history of civil unrest, racism, sexism, violence--was all still there, just glossed over in the shiny history textbooks. It was not the great country we'd been told it was. 

Even worse, that democracy itself was fragile like a doll, could be unwound and unraveled to the barest bone. That a few people in the right paces could make holes that made us vulnerable to evil (which at this point seems the best way to describe it.) To lies and hatred. To violence and collapse. Worse that some people were actually working for this to happen. That where there are men who abuse power, there will always be conflict.  Someone actively trying to destroy what we had created over the past 250 odd years, But more importantly, that American democracy it would ultimately withstand lies and hatred, violence and potential collapse. That it would re-emerge intact and with our eyes forward. 

Tonight, watching the recording of today's inauguration, it seemed quite a miraculous thing. The Capitol, still there and intact, rising behind the speaker when only two weeks ago, it was violence and murder and chaos. That in November, all that uncertain  span of days, I kept hearing the echo of "trust the system," but it was hard after so many systems so often failed. But yet, miraculous that here we are, on the other side of the terrible river of the past four years, and that we made it.