This from the New York Times:

A capital under siege

A presidential inauguration in the United States is usually a celebration of democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington to watch a newly elected president take the oath of office. A departing president signals his respect for the country by celebrating the new one, even when that departing president is disappointed by the election’s outcome — as was the case with Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and others.

“I grew up in the Washington area, and inaugurations have always been a time of hope and fresh beginnings regardless of party,” Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, told me.

But when American democracy is under siege, an inauguration can have a very different feel. That was true in 1945, when the U.S. was fighting fascism in World War II, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration was a spartan affair. It was true in 1861, when the country was on the verge of war and Abraham Lincoln was the target of an assassination plot. It was true again four years later, when smallpox was raging and the Civil War was nearing its end.

And it will be true today — when mismanagement has left the U.S. coping with the world’s worst Covid-19 toll and when law enforcement agencies are warning of potential violence by President Trump’s supporters.

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Our nation is understood by many as a nation of laws.  If we are a fundamentally just nation, a people with a true interest to become a more just society, why is the soon-to-be former president Trump not to be led from the White House in handcuffs?  How is his disinterest in fighting the pandemic, his lies, his indifference not the cause of many thousands of unnecessary deaths?

If I should to see a toddler wander into a boulevard busy with traffic, and not shout and rush forward to save the child from being mangled, or killed by  a vehicle, — how am I not guilty of murder?  The result would be the same as if I had shoved the child into traffic.

To do little to nothing, when the power and privilege of office places one in a position of leadership, how does that not fall within the definition of murder?

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Too long many of has have been exhausted by the sociopath living in the White House.  This song is apropos of our times, and of the work that waits to be done on behalf of every man and every woman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uAyovudcJQ

Feel Like A Number

lyrics By Bob Seger

I take my card and I stand in line
To make a buck I work overtime
Dear Sir letters keep coming in the mail

I work my back till it’s racked with pain
The boss can’t even recall my name
I show up late and I’m docked
It never fails

I feel like just another
Spoke in a great big wheel
Like a tiny blade of grass
In a great big field

To workers I’m just another drone
To Ma Bell I’m just another phone
I’m just another statistic on a sheet

To teachers I’m just another child
To IRS I’m another file
I’m just another consensus on the street

Gonna cruise out of this city
Head down to the sea
Gonna shout out at the ocean
Hey it’s me

And I feel like a number
Feel like a number
Feel like a stranger
A stranger in this land
I feel like a number
I’m not a number
I’m not a number
Dammit I’m a man
I said I’m a man