INAUGURATION

I’m a bit tense today. No particular reason, just one of those things I suppose.

Watching the inauguration didn’t help. You know the USA fascinates me for so many reasons, and on this pomp and purpose day, there’s an awful lot to be fascinated by. And yet, it weirdly made me feel a bit stressed.

It’s a bit like watching a half-time team talk. It’s not your team, but you know that what this coach says could impact the way your team and you are going to have to play. So in troops the marching band and the locker room goes wild to the sound of what’s essentially the music of an Edwardian steam fair. Then someone slaps someone else on the back and chants ‘we are the champions’ or something bombastic.

Then someone, the chaplain probably, says a prayer that reinforces how great God thinks their team is and how it’s his divine will (obviously) that they’re going to win. More whooping, after a sombre amen of course.

Anyway, there it is. I watched with eyes wide and question marks hovering. Will he really get hold of Greenland? Is he really going to send troops to reclaim the Panama Canal? Does America first mean everybody else second? And are they going to Mars? Elon Musk grinned behind him and stuck up two thumbs.

At one point, several uniformed soldiers marched in singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s from the civil war, sung by the victorious Union forces as a patriotic symbol of the ‘glorious’ United States. As the men marched into the Rotunda, each stomp to the beat, they had to bash into the arms of the folks on the end of the rows. The aisle wasn’t big enough.

Shoulder after shoulder got barged out of the way by the song, whether faithful republican, disappointed democrat or just your average American. On went the singers, bashing and belting out the lyrics stamped into their proud hearts and voices, regardless of their wake.

That, I thought, just about sums it up for me.