Will joe biden’s grand gesture of reconciliation bring america together? | thearticle

It wasn’t just Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day: it was America’s. Despite the suffocating security, the absence of cheering crowds and the bitter cold, the earnest desire to reimagine the

American dream, to glimpse again the shining city on a hill, was genuine. A nation torn apart by fault lines, some as old as the republic, was making a supreme collective effort to come

together. If at times it felt like a trip down memory lane, that was in part because of the new President’s age, but in part also due to nostalgia for safer, kinder, better days. This was a

traumatised people returning to its roots, huddling together for comfort, revisiting their original contract with one another, praying for unity after coming as close to civil war as it has

been for a century and a half. When Biden spoke, it was to rekindle a sense of common purpose, appealing to all those — nigh on half the population — who were absent, not just physically but

emotionally, too. The fact that an attempt had been made, just a fortnight ago, to desecrate their “sacred ground”, the tabernacle of democracy, was acknowledged more than once. Biden did

not mince his words: the “riotous mob” would not prevail. He would confront “political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism” and defeat them. But his aim was to drive a wedge

between the far-Right extremists and the far greater number who had voted against him and were now simmering with sullen resentment. His appeal was to them, and to his own supporters too:

“Let’s start afresh. All of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect for one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire,

destroying everything in its path. We must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.” President Biden is not naive. His has been one of the longest

careers in modern American public life. His fiery metaphor for politics will have made those who know real wildfires in California and elsewhere shudder — but it is all too apt for the

predicament of a nation locked into mutually exclusive echo chambers. He knew that most of the 74 million who voted against him were not listening — were too angry to do so. But he implored

them nevertheless to hear him out: “Take a measure of me and my heart, and if you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America.” It was a good speech, indeed almost a great

one: sentimental but sincere, even if the delivery was wooden. Biden is a very average orator, but he invoked the memory of the greatest that America has known, from Washington to Lincoln,

and he rose to the occasion. His lifelong stammer made a fitful appearance and that was endearing. He was effusive about his Vice President, Kamala Harris, for this was her moment too — a

moment that half the country had waited too long to see. This presidency, unlike the last one, will not be all about one old man. One name was missing from Biden’s speech, just as its owner

was missing from the ceremony. Neither absence was accidental. For four years Donald Trump has dominated the national and international conversation to such an extent that a period of

silence from and about him would be welcome. There will be a time and a place to reckon with him, but that time and place were not Washington DC on Inauguration Day. Having sulked and

schemed during the fortnight since his day of infamy, January 12, then vacated the premises of the White House to the sound of Sinatra’s “My Way” and a 21-gun salute, Trump had finally

summoned up the grace to leave his successor a “very generous” letter in the desk. Biden refused to release its contents: “Because it was private, I won’t talk about it until I talk to him.

But it was generous.” Such gestures matter. The bathos of Trump’s twilight has been replaced by the pathos of Biden’s new dawn. In the midst of a pandemic which — as the new President

reminded us — has already killed 400,000, more Americans than the Second World War, there is simply no place for discord and conflict. It will take a lot more than executive orders to

mandate mask-wearing by federal staff and create a Covid-19 response coordinator if the death toll is not ultimately to exceed the butcher’s bill of the Civil War, 620,000. Still, the

challenge of a crisis brings with it the hope that Republicans and Democrats, Red and Blue, conservatives and liberals might bury the hatchet — if only temporarily. There is a chance for

forgiveness and reconciliation. Heaven knows, America needs it. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

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