I have taken up the task of writing an opinion piece on the Inauguration of the 47th president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. I think, to be clear on my position, it would be most sensible to introduce my politics. To avoid muddying down the rest of this article, I will speak of ideals. I believe, to steal a phrase from fiction, in “Truth, justice, and the American way.” I believe in the idea that the Constitution is a document, sacred, and designed to change and adapt over time. If it was immutable, there would not be amendments to it. I believe all men are created equal, and anybody should have the inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe in the separation of church and state, and I believe that every man, citizen or not, has certain inalienable rights. When Lady Liberty cries, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” She does not once demand their race, background, education or religion. Columbia, who stands atop the Capitol building, was only forced to doff her Phrygian cap, the symbol of her freedom from slavery, by the traitor Jefferson Davis.
And so, when I looked at the aftermath of the Inauguration, I was as unsurprised. Trump and Chief Justice John G. Roberts failing to execute the swearing in ceremony properly. Billionaires surrounding the ceremony — and yes, before opposition is raised, I do think it’s disgusting when Democrats do that with celebrities and the like — billionaires like ducks waddling about for their crumbs (handouts), and then the speeches. The speeches and the executive actions which followed.
From Trump’s inauguration speech—“…a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens…” need I remind the reader of the crowd of the richest men in the world in attendance? The current president seeks to consolidate as much power as possible into the executive. Trump has been within mainstream politics for a decade. There comes a time, with experience and time spent in Washington, where someone can no longer be considered an outsider. Someone who has been working within politics and politicians since 2015, is not an outsider of the establishment.
During the ceremony itself, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson somehow looked happier than the president-elect or vice president. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, threw out a pair of awkward, clumsy Nazi salutes on stage at Trump’s victory rally. I have seen the clip, and I have seen people say it was, just an awkward motion, or, that he was so jumped up on ketamine — not a ridiculous assumption, honestly — he thought that’s what a good motion would be, or that it was actually a “roman” salute and not what it was. Quite frankly, if it quacks and waddles like a duck, I will call it a duck. The guy posts about phrenology on Twitter and is from Apartheid South Africa, for God’s sake. Melania Trump avoiding kissing her husband was an interesting note, as an addendum. Regardless, none of that is really the “point” of this opinion piece. Everyone knows who Trump is.
I considered, for a time, making this opinion piece a time capsule. An, “I told you so”, preemptively, for the next two years at least. A rebuke, of everything I thought would be wrong with Trump’s policies, starting from the tariffs, intervention in Mexico, the Greenland fiasco, forced return to the office for federal workers, etc. and working down the list. But I have decided that nobody wants to read that right now. The next four years will feature a lot of anger, much of it righteous. I have decided that rather than publish an angry, spiteful article, which I will no doubt do soon enough, on this day, an appeal to the common citizen. There are two quotations which I am going to point to.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” – Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th president of the U.S.
If someone is telling you to hate someone in the same tax bracket, check how much money they make compared to you. Every person on Earth, not in the tens of millions club and below, is closer to a homeless man than any of the CEOs who attended that inauguration, and a person can do everything right or wrong and end up with either result. The quotation I have chosen, I have chosen in relation to the holiday the inauguration has overruled — Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He was taken from the U.S. on April 4th, 1968. Johnson was our president from 1963 to 1969. Don’t let a rich man pick your pocket.
“Five minutes for the rest of your life, cowboy!” – Greg Jackson, coach of UFC fighter Donald Cerrone, right before the final round of UFC 141.
I know a lot of people hate sports metaphors, but allow me a moment. To contextualize, Cerrone had been punched in the head 66 times heading into the third round. To those who depend on assistance to live, to those in the LGBTQ+ community, seeing an administration which openly hates them, to students, who the House GOP wants to make report their scholarships as taxable income, — you’ve been punched in the head a lot.
I’ll be frank; you’re gonna get punched in the head a lot more. But you’ve been punched in the head sixty times already. You may as well go out there, protest policies you don’t like, call senators and representatives and get involved in community efforts.
If there is anything to say, it is that this is the time to become as politically active as possible. Start working with local politics, national politics, all of it. Fight hate against your neighbors and your friends. Over the past decade, confederates and neo-Nazis have been slowly empowered to the point of being effectively mainstream to the modern GOP with figures like Musk and J.D. Vance. Fight those guys too however you can. Everyone wishes they could ignore politics, but it is political to ignore politics. If you’ve been punched a lot, all there is to do is go out, touch gloves, and fight for your rights. There will be a group that says platitudes are worthless and this article is too. I would challenge those people to go out and do something practical.