So, the inaugural is over and the work has begun for the new Biden administration. Trump, the wicked one has departed and the media, I assume, awaits his next move. Will it be a jail cell, impeachment, or a new TV station? Certainly, he will try to go into business and parlay his presidency into profit.
President Joseph Biden, number 46, is in the White House signing a desk full of executive orders. His first task is to try to get control of the COVID virus that is still raving throughout the country and is predicted to get worse before it gets better, even as the vaccine is in place. The second is trying to carefully reopen the stores, the restaurants, travel, the beauty salons, etc., and get back to normal.
Meanwhile, you drive through the streets and you see the ravish of COVID for a year, that has changed lives everywhere, no matter who or where you are. The magnificent mile is no longer magnificent as Macy’s departs from Water Tower. Other stores have been forced to close. Driving down south State Street, you remember when it was busy and again you see empty stores and final sales. Neighborhood stores are boarded up as they too have been forced to close, no fault of their own, but forced by the government as we zoom our meetings, praying for our churches to resume. Biden is faced with COVID on one hand and the still of the economy on the other.
The Biden Challenge
Biden in an instant restored the country with dignity, respect, and calmness reserved for the high office that Trump constantly violated and disrespected. The news now reports on the reality behind the scenes of the chaotic state in the White House during the revolving door of the Trump years. He didn’t understand, or he didn’t care or he was just plain ignorant as he gambled American lives with COVID information and intelligence. The new news frightens us as we discover threats to Dr. Fauci for telling the truth,
We feel confident and sleep better with brand-new leadership that will direct and correct the ills of society. He is experienced, as he has moved from being the youngest senator to the oldest sitting president at 78 years old. He ran for the office three times, in 1998, 2008, and 2020. Now is his time to take the reigns of America. He is ready and able and wise and promised to be a great president. He knows the rules of government, he can cross the aisle. He is a public servant and not an entrepreneur. His voice is ministerial, soothing as he sounds like a father who knows best.
Biden’s Quest
South Carolina turned the corner for Biden with Congressman James Clyburn’s endorsement, signaling Black America, that Biden was the one. And Stacey Abrams provided historical super organizing power in Georgia to deliver Reverend Raphael Warnock the first Black and the first Georgia Jew, Jon Ossoff to the Senate that provides Biden a Democratic stronghold that should make his life easy with Madame Vice President breaking ties if necessary. The new senators know the home and pulpit of King and the voice and path of John Lewis. Biden owes Black women political preference and maybe just maybe we will get a Black woman on the Supreme Court in his administration as he makes historical appointments already.
Amanda Gorman, the young poet with an old soul, gave it to America the beautiful with her poem, The Hill We Climb. She set the real mandate on bringing the country to where it should be, as it resets itself to a country “tis of thee” where we honestly look at our divides from the southern living to the northern dwelling; from Black and White perspectives and we look at the economy of the rich to the poor and as we look at the slanted judicial system that has different codes of conduct, based on skin color.
The Hill We Climb takes us there with reality and romance as we all move forward and against the past, the immediate past of George Floyd, and the historical past, 1619. That’s the real quest for the Biden and Harris team. It is the hope as we live in a new America and as we make a new America, as we plan a new future that just eliminated a demigod for real democracy. Even with his evil and sinister ways, American democracy is better, even with its flaws, than a Hitler-like regime.
America has to rid itself of racism, finally. Systemic racism has to be eradicated not improved. Race relations have had their day, it is now time for eradication and a lift of the caste system, that Isabel Wilkerson writes about to vanish. It has to be eliminated from the American way. I hope we are not expecting too much from Biden and company with his new team of power, but this is where we are and the tough issues have to be addressed.
I hope the Biden term shows a real commitment to what King called “genuine equality” for Black America. No more tokens, no more minority, no more rations. We can’t change history but we can “repair” it. Lincoln freed the slaves with nothing. People, American citizens, were allowed to wander in the wilderness, reaching and stretching for the American dream living a frightful nightmare of uneducated, Jim Crown, Black Codes, rape, lynching, broken families, poverty, and constant denial of basic human rights deprived of dignity.
The bright face on the Washington stage was Amanda Gorman. She asked the question on January 20, 2021, inaugural day, in a bright sunshine yellow coat with innocence and audacity. She found America’s beauty. And so now, “When the day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it”
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