It showed up as a FaceBook memory, but I had recalled it quite vividly even prior to that. It was Inauguration Day 2017, when that wretched inciteful criminal was being sworn into office, and the country felt like it was being enveloped in some Orwellian nightmare. Those feelings would prove to be well-founded and mostly came to sad and unfortunate fruition, each and every single step along the way. I’d made reservations for dinner at 677 Prime that night, and after work I made my way to the bar to have a cocktail before Andy arrived.
Lifting the olive-festooned martini to my lips, I did my best to ignore the television station playing the inaugural event, but every now and then my eyes glanced up at the sad not-quite-spectacle that played out on the screen. Who could have foretold all the evils and atrocities that man would commit or attempt to commit? (Well, me.) Who could have foreseen all the disasters and deaths that he would single-handedly allow on his watch? (Again, me.) And who would have predicted that this would be the sorry state of the world four years later (Same.)
Today we stand in all the swampy muck and awful mess that he left, the shambles he and his family so heinously made of America, and we look to someone – anyone – to help clean up the disaster. In so many ways, it’s too late. The monster has been unleashed. The hatred has been given light and space in which to move and breathe and spread. It happened in ways large and small, from the liars themselves to the media who gave it a place to exist in the first place. That doesn’t mean some of us won’t fight back and work to return to the essence of what made America great from the beginning. Those basic tenets remain in place, standing despite the reckoning they’ve been given: freedom, equality, and opportunity for all of us.
I’m tentatively hopeful for the first time in four years, and that in itself is a feat worthy of respect and honor. We move forward to greater unity, essential accountability, moral come-uppance, and a better future.
