I watched the Trump “inauguration” so you don’t have to

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For what it’s worth, I watched the “inauguration” on C-SPAN live stream on YouTube instead of on regular TV. For me it was the blackest moment in American history. In the run up to that blackest moment, Biden-Harris advance man Doug Landry put it best: “The great thing about moving the inauguration to the rotunda, is that all of [Trump’s] supporters already know how to get there.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no screenplay writer would be allowed to get away with what happened in real-time before my eyes. The same man who promoted, advertised and allowed an attempted overthrow of the United States government was sworn in as president of the United States in the very same place where his insurrection happened. I had to suspend my disbelief for a reality I actually saw. There’s no way I could have done it for a mere movie. I would have walked out of the theatre.

I also watched Trump do the equivalent of reciting the oath of office with his fingers crossed behind his back. While the newly-restored First Golddigger stood next to him with a proverbial stack of Bibles, Trump raised his right hand but failed to put his left hand on those Bibles.

After swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” without breaking out in laughter, Trump then launched into a dystopian inaugural address that outlined exactly how he plans to fail to do just that. For one thing, Trump promised to end birthright citizenship, a right granted by section 1 of the 14th amendment.

As observed, Trump’s very presence in the rotunda to take the oath was a violation of section 3 of that same Constitutional amendment. Having sworn the oath of office before, he is disqualified from holding the office of president ever again. Trump not only engaged in an insurrection, he gave aid and comfort to the insurrectionists. That disqualification can only be removed by a supermajority vote in both the House and the Senate. No such vote has ever taken place. So what the hell was he doing there, swearing to uphold the Constitution? And why were those idiots cheering? It’s madness.

Trump not only existentially broke his oath to the Constitution, he also promised to destroy the environment. He said he will “end the electric car mandate” (I wonder what Elon thinks of that!), withdraw once more from the Paris Climate Treaty and “drill baby drill.” Trump, in short, promised to “restore” America to the 1950s, a time before sane government regulations kept Americans safe from rapacious capitalists. A time before global climate change was a well-known existential threat.

Most chilling for America’s immediate prospects, Trump also said he would immediately declare a “national emergency,” using the nonexistent “crisis at the border” as a pretext. The border was functioning better under Biden than it did the last time the MAGA toad-god infested the Oval Office. At any rate, this declaration will grant Trump Hitlerian special powers. When a president declares a national emergency, over 130 special authorities — such as the authority to shutdown communications facilities or draw down equipment from national defense stockpiles — are immediately unlocked. This enables him to intervene in ways that are unavailable outside of an emergency declaration. The MAGA crowd in the rotunda cheered these hideous promises. Democrats sat in sullen silence.

Then something very odd happened, to cap a very odd afternoon. When Carrie Underwood was called upon to sing “America the Beautiful,” she stood in awkward perplexity waiting for an orchestral accompaniment that never came. A brief blast of the music came and went, never to recur. After a full minute of this she finally gave up and sang the song a cappella. What made the moment priceless was the look on Joe Biden’s face. He looked as if he could barely contain himself from laughing out loud. Bill Clinton did in fact laugh out loud. Democrats smirked. Trump and his thugs were not amused.

So dictator Trump is now in office again. The damage he will do to America in the next four years will only be mitigated by his stupidity and the blessed incompetence of the morons surrounding him. Let’s be thankful for that, in that they are all idiots, and hope their idiocy causes them to fail. Whatever happens, America’s darkest day is going to keep getting darker until the sun shines once more in a future we can only hope for. Don’t give up hope.

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