Deep exhale.
Feel that tension leaving your shoulders. Four years is long enough for it to get in deep, so you might want to take a stretch too, it’ll feel great.
We are now three weeks into the Biden Administration and things could not be more different. Our president is filling the ranks of the government with competent civil servants, rather than toadies and donors. We have recommitted to the Paris Accord and our support for the World Health Organization; reaffirmed diplomacy as our international calling card, casting out childish “me first” rhetoric. We are rebuilding the actual fabric of what really made America great.
However, restoring the norms of the pre-Trump era is not entirely possible, or at least likely to be a quick task. As much as we would hope that Trumpism would be evaporated in the light of this new day, the world has been changed. The new GOP is the GOP of Marjorie Taylor Greene; conspiracy theories and outright lies are now, more than ever, their stock and trade. Even our own local GOP leaders have propagated the lie that the election Trump lost was stolen or unfair. The most recent GOP nominee for the 6th Congressional District filed a spurious lawsuit to challenge the results of his massive loss to Seth Moulton (he lost bigger than any GOP candidate has in several cycles). The local GOP city committee leadership then posted images of this ridiculous lawsuit to celebrate it. These people have made themselves the enemies of democracy and we will never forget it.
We are called as Americans to the charge to not ignore attempts to weaken our democracy. Don’t be afraid to call out creeping bigotry and nonsense when you see it. We have a long road ahead to a new normal, and the Trump-era infatuation with ‘alternative facts’ should find there no place to take root.
Democratically yours,
Matthew C. Murray