Trump is gone, and it is a new dawn.

We made it.

We survived.

No violence.

A peaceful transfer of power.

I woke up yesterday morning to the news that Donald and Melania Trump had already departed in a helicopter from the White House. No straightjacket or handcuffs were required to get him out, as I had not quite jokingly worried about for months.

Oh, did I mention that all the library staff worked remotely yesterday because downtown Lansing was deemed potentially too dangerous for us to work in the building? Thank you Trump. Thank you MAGA, Proud Boy, and QAnon buffoons.

I can happily report that there was no violence in Lansing yesterday. In fact, I think the city was a ghost town on Inauguration Day. 

So I woke up, found out that Trump had left, and wrote this on Facebook. (I really need to spend less time on Facebook, but that's another story). These words were straight from the gut and flowed right out of me. I had probably waited four or five years to write them:

"He is gone. Good riddance. Easily the worst president in my lifetime and one of the worst in American history. He damaged the country in ways we still have not fully grasped. No amount of mental gymnastics or alternate reality creation from his followers can change the objective truth of the havoc and horror he caused."

I settled in and watched the inauguration on television. While trying not to get nervous that anything would upside down, I was moved by it: the pomp and circumstance, the feelings of cautious optimism. (And I was intrigued by Kamala Harris' twenty-something stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, whose funky bohemian fashion was fascinating and most welcome. I later learned that she is a student at Parsons School of Design).

Lady Gaga sang a lovely rendition of the national anthem while wearing a large gold dove on her dress, and poet laureate Amanda Gorman read a beautiful and emotional poem.

Everything went off without a hitch, and I can't adequately describe how relieved I was by that.

Later in the day, after going for my first run of the Biden administration, I watched the Celebrating America television special. The highlight for me was Bruce Springsteen singing "Land of Hope and Dreams" alone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As the cliché goes, "who started chopping onions in here?!"

Everything yesterday went about as well as could be expected, and now begins the arduous task of getting the nation back on track again.

Stressed out

I am in one of those periodic stages I have been throughout the pandemic in which I feel like the world is closing in on me. I'm stressed out and the only way I can get through is by taking life day by day, which I suppose is what everyone is doing.

We had someone test positive for Covid at my workplace, and that has me feeling anxiety. I think it has most of us feeling some degree of anxiety. I feel that I'm constantly monitoring my health: "Is that a sore throat I feel coming on? No, I guess not. Good. Can I still smell things? Yes? Good. Uh-oh, I just coughed. Is that just a normal cough? I guess so. Good." And on and on. I mean, I tend to be a bit neurotic anyway, but combine that with a pandemic and one positive test at work--the first one we have had to the best of my knowledge--and I am even more on edge than usual. 

Before I make this too much about me, I must say that I hope my co-worker who tested positive makes a full recovery.

By the way, yesterday marked the seven month anniversary of me returning to work in the office. My goal is to stay healthy until I can get the vaccine, whenever that is. Right now, it's looking like spring at the earliest.

And then there is the continuing fallout from the coup attempt on January 6. The next several days leading to January 20 will be fraught with tension. Is the violence over? Will the inauguration of Biden happen without a hitch? And if so, what happens in the aftermath? These are scary times, the likes of which none of us have ever seen before. As a somewhat naïve white American man, I always presumed that no matter  our differences in this country, the peaceful transfer of power was pretty much a given.* American institutions were such that everything would be "fine." At least to a certain extent, I believed in American exceptionalism. Coups and dictatorships were what happened in other countries, not in the strong, solid, democratic United States of America.

It seems clear that the violence is not over, and I hope that the National Guard and/or law enforcement is prepared to stop any further insurrection, but I'm anxiety-ridden. I have absolutely no faith in law enforcement in doing the right thing, and only slightly more faith in the National Guard. I hope to God I am wrong.

I am extremely worried about Inauguration Day, and would prefer Biden and Harris to take the oath of office indoors--though I understand Biden's wanting to defy the insurrectionists and have the ceremony outside. It seems too dangerous, though.

Even before Inauguration Day, the Trump Cult plans "demonstrations" on the days leading up to the 20th, and the FBI has reported that these are not simply "demonstrations." Violence and mayhem are in the cards.

The House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on a second Trump impeachment. I find laughable the claims by Republicans that impeachment will simply "divide" the country and create more violence. Haven't we already crossed that bridge? Trump needs to be punished for his attempted coup and for every bit of corruption that has taken place since his first impeachment, there is no way around it. The country is already divided and the Trump Cult will be violent whether there is an impeachment or not. Whatever "healing" that can take place in this country will not take place for a long time. 

So there you have it, I'm nervous as hell. My Fitbit tells me my heart rate has been above average for eight days in a row. I have no doubt that stress is the major contributing factor.

That's all for now...

*Note: Obama's first inaugural in 2009 was the only previous exception to this belief that the peaceful transition of power would take place without incident. In the back of my mind, I worried that Secret Service, Homeland Security, or the FBI would intervene on the dais and declare that "this has gone on long enough. We cannot have a black president."

An attempted overthrow of the federal government. The culmination of Trumpism

The dust has at least temporarily cleared from yesterday's storming of the United States Capitol and attempted coup by a mob of MAGA terrorists.

How long have I been railing against Trump and the danger he presents to our nation? It's not as if I'm a brilliant sage or learned political scholar. Anyone with a brain could have seen this coming as far back as 2015, when Trump announced he was running for president and started to get traction. And in all actuality, this is a wound that has been festering since well before Trump became president.

What should have been a celebratory day--after Georgia elected Raphael Warnock, the state's first ever Black senator (and Jon Ossoff also winning his Georgia senatorial runoff)--turned into an afternoon of chaos in Washington, DC. What happened at the capitol was simply the culmination of the ferment that Trump has been stoking for the last four plus years. 

The week began with me leaving messages on the voicemails of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. You can see how effective that was. I did feel some catharsis from doing it, however.

Yesterday afternoon, I decided not to take a walk in downtown Lansing. This has been one of several times in the last nine months I have simply decided not to risk it. That is how periodically disturbing our state capitol has been, between COVID/Lockdown protestors and MAGA nutjobs. (The Venn diagram for these groups has a vast overlap). I had a feeling the scene would not be good, and as it turned out there were a handful of right-wingers at the state capitol. 

Michigan State Capitol, January 6, 2020 (photo credit: Matthew Dae Smith, Lansing State Journal)

Instead, I drove the short jaunt to the Record Lounge and thought I'd spend a few minutes looking at records. (If you're wondering if I bought anything, of course I did). As I was exiting my car a little after 2:00, I saw reports of what was happening in Washington. By the time I returned to work, all hell had broken loose. I could barely work the rest of the day. I was shaken. It was a nightmare come true. I have never been sadder to be an American citizen as I was yesterday.

What happened yesterday cannot be tolerated. The perpetrators need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for inciting an attempted overthrow of the federal government. He cannot be allowed to get away with this.

And with that, I'm out for now.