Something dies, and something is born, and the sunset begets the sunrise.
What died in the last two weeks — hell, in the last four years — was the idea of the American empire as the Trump Administration’s “America First” policy, which was really the “Donald J. Trump First” policy, absented America from the world stage even as the president himself assumed imperialistic trappings of Caligula- and Nero-like proportions.
In the place of empire was born an America humbled by a virus it cannot wrap its head around, economic hardship and systemic racism that can no longer be denied. But that humiliation may not be such a bad thing. It’s as if after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome returned to its republican — with a lower-case “r” — roots, becoming something smaller but perhaps also ultimately something finer and truer.
We are a great nation, a good people, the new president — the appropriately homespun Joe Biden — said in his uplifting yet realistic inaugural address. And that means even the sunny Biden — who has the optimism of all great presidents — would probably admit we are also a country that has lost its way.
But that’s OK. If you never lose yourself, you can never find your authentic self either. What was most striking to me about an iInauguration Day like no other — culminating in the terrific “Celebrating America” event that replaced the traditional inaugural gala — was how much of it of necessity took place outdoors and at night in what is for America the least hospitable and outdoorsy of seasons — winter. And yet, the flags rustling in the cold wind on the National Mall were as exhilarating a sight as the flag-waving multitude they represented, just as the night gave shape to the manmade light. For it was only at night that you could see the magnificent fireworks answering the fireworks of a different kind that desecrated the Capitol Building two weeks earlier. Rockets red glare indeed.
Perhaps that was what Lady Gaga was thinking as she gestured to the Capitol and its flags as she sang “The Star-Bangled Banner” before Biden’s inauguration. Gaga and JLo and those Jersey Boys, Springsteen and Bon Jovi, were just some of the stars throughout the day who were interspersed with ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their communities and introducing one another coast-to-coast. That’s America, too. And they were united by a technology that has also divided us. That’s very 21st-century America as well.
Perhaps in this America, we shall learn at last to embrace and unite our contradictions, not the least of which are our darker impulses and our straining for the light. Much of the day, much of the night, was about light, songs about the sun and hopes and dreams and love. It really began the night before at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool lined with 400 lights to memorialize the 400,000 people and counting who died from Covid-19 — like so many lanterns released in Asian societies to set the souls of the dead free.
May we be set free now from the wreckage of the last four years to set forth on that road that leads to light and understanding and peace.