

The sense of a new beginning is, of course, being exploited by the Trumpite right-let’s move on, shall we, and just pretend that that violent insurrection thing didn’t happen-but, even among those purer of heart and purpose, there is a properly sensed virtue in forgetting.īut it still seems worth making an inventory of our own anticipations and predictions-to open an inquiry into what those on the liberal side of the argument got right and what they got wrong about the fate of democracy over the course of the past four years. That feeling of release made some a little reluctant to go back into evaluating the immediate past having awoken from a bad dream, you’re disinclined to want to spend too much time remembering all its elements. Lo during the ceremony, masks cautiously off and spirits high, to Bruce Springsteen being so entirely, gravelly Bruce at night. “Everyone suddenly burst out singing,” the British Great War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote about another memorable day of transition, Armistice Day, in 1918, and people burst out singing on this occasion, too, from Lady Gaga and J. Even Bernie Sanders felt it, telling Seth Meyers that he wept with pleasure, in his now famous full-granddad getup, at the installation of the new President. It was mostly unforeseen, the sudden sense of exultation and exhalation mingled-a surging heart matched by a good, deep breath-that the Inauguration produced in so many.
