If someone had told Americans right after the 6th of January that the Inauguration of the now officially President Joe Biden would have been a safe and perfectly organized event and the source of one of the most appreciated memes worldwide, I don’t think many people would have been ready to believe that someone was saying the truth.
Although different from the previous ones, the Inauguration 2021 didn’t absolutely let us down and contributed to mark what for many could be considered as a fresh new start and a big opportunity to improve the Country’s credibility around the world, a feeling that lately isn’t difficult for us Italians to understand as well.
I’m sure every one still remembers the amazing performances of the singers Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez and the one from the poetess Amanda Gorman, whom we’ll talk about later on, but such an important tradition as the Inauguration of the President of the United States goes way deeper that and many little details can easily slip through the cracks. If you kept reading till here than you might want to discover more about this topic and that’s what we are going to try to do in this article, even if a lesson I’ve learned is that you never stop learning from America.
MASKS, MASKS, MASKS Masks: both the simplest way to protect people from a pandemic and the most discussed topic during one. In America the hamletic question wasn’t really whether wearing masks for a long period of time could be dangerous or which kind of masks could be safer, but whether people should wear a mask at all. Although this could not seem directly connected with the Inauguration itself, it is extremely important in order to understand the background in which it took place.
Government orders requiring face coverings were considered by anti-maskers as a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, assembly, association and especially of a person’s constitutional right to liberty and to make decisions about their own health and bodily integrity. To these accusations the Court of Palm Beach County, against which a lawsuit was filled by four Florida men, responded with “[…] After all, we do not have a constitutional right to infect others.”
The ideological battle was then, as expected, immediately taken on by the two major American parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, the latter being more represented through former President Donald Trump, becoming an important and clear element of division. While Biden based part of his campaign on the fight against Covid-19, Trump appeared unconcerned about the absence of masks and social distancing at his campaign rally and had former Vice President Mike Pence saying that “Even in a health crisis, the American people don’t forfeit our constitutional rights.”
The legitimation of these tendencies by the two highest personalities of the Sate had, as an obvious result, a growth of consent for these groups and the validation of the concern that COVID-19 wasn’t really that harmful.
Even though in a much smaller scale, this was the same process which led to what happened at the Capitol only one month ago when the than President Donald Trump legitimated the violence of the protesters and approved the attack against the members of the Senate, Congress ad against the former Vice President himself.
The possibility of the Inauguration being another target for the insurrectionists led to the rapid transformation of Washington D.C. in what could be described only as a battle field (I’m pretty sure everyone saw the pictures of soldiers sleeping inside the Capitol’s building) and contributed to increase the already existent fears and tensions during the event.
Soldiers sleeping in the Capitol's building
THE GUESTS: THE BRAVERY OF BEING THE LIGHT Another thing to keep in mind while watching the Inauguration is that the choice of the guests by the new President and Vice President is never casual, it is usually in fact an important statement and message for those watching at home. What is sure is that it has been a day in the spirit of women.
Lady Gaga is a worldwide famous singer and one surely appreciated by every single participant at the Inauguration, many even argued on Twitter that wasn’t Mike Pence’s first concert as well. But her being chosen to sing the National Anthem is an actual milestone for the LGBTQ+ community, making her the first out bisexual woman to do so.
What really inflamed passions during Jennifer Lopez’s performance was the choice of the song. “This Land is your Land” is a famous protest song written by the American singer Woody Guthrie against the equally known “America the Beautiful” that would continuously be played on the radio. Today it is known by many as an “alternative National Anthem” which seems to convey a fairly simple message: every one is equally entitled to the rights of America, including the land itself. The apparent inclusivity of the song has been called into question by Native Americans pointing out that the sentence “this land was made for you and me” is a colonialist message, since the land was stolen from the natives by foreign conquerors. Many didn’t consider this a great start for a new administration that seeks to unite a divided country.
However, the true star of the Inauguration Day was the young Poetess Amanda Gorman, a true discovery that has been made possible thanks to the wise choice of Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden. As a matter-of-fact Gorman did not start existing after the Inauguration of the 46th President of the United States and had a brilliant career even before what can be considered as her highest moment of visibility so far. Born and raised in California, she started being interested in poetry from a young age as a way of expressing herself in a different and unconventional way. Such as President Joe Biden, she suffered from a speech impediment and while crawling her way out she also took the opportunity to become aware of “Sonics” and the “auditory experience”. A few years later she became a delegate for the United Nations and success soon arrived making her the first “National Youth Poet Laureate” by 2017.
Amanda Gorman at the Inauguration
The bright colors and the accessories, advised by none other than Opera Wilfley, were no coincidence as well. The ring depicting a caged bird was regarded as symbol of freedom and hope, while the choice of the yellow coat as a reference to the theme of light, cornerstone of her poem “The Hill We Climb” (For there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it.)
THE BIBLE, THE PENS AND THE WARDROBE No, there’s no wardrobe in this story, I just really wanted to quote “The Narnian Chronicles” to make all of this more interesting, but there are however a very famous Bible and way too many pens.
On the 20th of January, President Joe Biden took his Oath of Office on what seemed to be a very heavy copy of the Bible, so heavy that the poor Jill Biden was visibly distressed by the task of holding it during the most important part of the ceremony. First of all let’s remember that no President is obliged to swear on The Bible, considered mostly as a symbol of a sort of Religion of Sate more than a Christian symbol itself, and that many prominent political figures have in fact chosen to do otherwise. As Francesco Costa, a journalist specialized in America (if you haven’t already read his new book, do that!), reminded us, the Californian Councilman Lan Diep decided for instance to take his Oath of Office holding a Captain America shield (in the picture below).
In Biden’s case, The Bible he chose was no ordinary Bible. The Book dates back to the 19th century and has stayed in the Biden’s household for generations. The same Bible Joe Biden chose to use for his first swearing-in ceremony ever as Senator of Delaware in 1972 after the car accident that claimed the life of his first wife and his youngest daughter and that was organized at the same hospital his two other children were been cured. The now President Biden decided to use that same Bible ever since.
Another interesting anecdote concerns the signature of the first acts by the new President in the Oval Office. If you noticed Biden signed every single act with a different pen, not obviously because he is a picky person but because all of the pen used in hose few minutes will be given out to famous personalities or museums across the Country and will always be a reminder of Biden’s first actions as Head of the State.
BERNIE
Last but not least, Bernie Sanders on a chair with magnificent mittens (that were actually made out of recycled plastic). I’m not going to bore you with his life, I’m just going to say that it was reassuring to see some kind of normality during an event that usually always needs to be perfect and that this year could have been the target of a ruthless group of insurrectionists, but that gave us the opportunity to have fun instead.
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