[20/365] inauguration

[cosmolinguist]

I forgot to write something before I was told to go to bed today, so I'm in bed and this'll be quick, but I really am surprised at how momentous a day it has felt like to me.

mother_bones told me to go to bed because I was practically falling asleep on the sofa. I slept badly and woke up with yet another sinus headache so I didn't start the day well. Work was fairly involved, and walking even part of the way back in torrential rain was also exhausting -- I was so glad when diffrentcolours's meeting got canceled and he could come rescue me from the rest of my walk.

By the time I got back we all settled down in front of the Twitch livestream (when I told L at work that we were going to watch the inauguration on Twitch, he said "...a platform Trump has been banned from!" which I either hadn't known or hadn't remembered, so having the juxtaposition pointed out to me was delicious). It was so cute having the tour guides on, doing the kind of commentary I recognize from everything from Test Match Special to the Rose Bowl parade, those nerds were just my kind of people.

Lady Gaga was amazing, I was pleased with the Woody Guthrie overtones of "This Land is Your Land" until it was pointed out to my chagrin that Native Americans weren't impressed because of course they weren't and I'm disappointed I didn't realize that myself.

Imagine how much of a badass motherfucker you have to be to be a Black woman ASL user and get to the point where you're doing the presidential inauguration. And I was so impressed with Amanda Gorman.

It was so cute to see Barack Obama and Lady Gaga fangirling at each other so hard. diffrentcolours said "They're looking at each other like me and Gary look at each other," and it's so true. If you want to know how my boyfriend and my dog gaze at each other, that is it.

And...we got a new president, and a new vice-president. No violence, no QAnon dreams came true. Trump left quietly, "angry and embarrassed, consumed with rage and grievance."

I've seen several friends today say that they truly didn't expect to survive a Trump administration and I'm so glad they're here to say that. I'm heartbroken and enraged for all the people who didn't, for the families separated, for the trauma so many of us have undergone, for the legislative and bureaucratic progress we lost in four years, some of which will take decades to undo and some of which can never be undone (some of it s being undone already though! and some more of it will be undone very quickly). But I'm so glad for all my friends who are still here. I get it, I was right there with you; I've never felt so suicidal as on the night I watched the election results on 2016. I was scared of all the suffering to come, literally thought it was unbearable, that I couldn't bear it, and it has been worse than I could have imagined then so I am glad for all the voices that are still here to say "I am still here" today, even as we close our eyes and hold our breath and remember who is not.

I wasn't expecting to be exhausted by the time the ceremony was over, but maybe it's no surprise that I was.

diffrentcolours looked for American takeaway ("there isn't a single place on JustEat that does corn dogs," he told me this morning) and we ended up with burgers and curly fries and mozzarella sticks. Since I'd had to go to Tesco for work, I treated myself to a new kind of fancy root beer and gosh was it worth it, probably the closest I've ever had in this benighted country to what I think of as "proper" root beer, it tasted delicious. We all probably ate too much and it was great, it felt really...festive somehow.

Biden is far from perfect (all this talk of unifying the country both worries and sickens me) and despite all the backlash I've seen on social media against all these people who apparently think everything's perfect now, I don't know anybody who actually thinks that. Everyone I talk to, like me, is ready to start holding some feet to some fires tomorrow but we let ourselves enjoy today. We've been damn short on victories since 2016, and we get to have today.

It's not that I think the work is done, it's that I finally think the work is possible again, and when it hasn't been for years that certainly is something to celebrate.

Comments

[worlds_of_smoke]

It's not that I think the work is done, it's that I finally think the work is possible again, and when it hasn't been for years that certainly is something to celebrate.

This. This is how I feel.

[used_songs]

Agreed.

[anankastick]

Clicked "reply" to say exactly that.

[jesse_the_k]

You say it so well, cosmolinguist!

[radiantfracture]

It's not that I think the work is done, it's that I finally think the work is possible again, and when it hasn't been for years that certainly is something to celebrate.

I like that -- thanks. That's a path to feeling hopeful for me.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad. Hope is really important.

[sfred]

<3

[diffrentcolours]

To quote New Model Army - "We will mix and mend when we have to, we will celebrate when we can".

Celebrations don't have to happen at the end once everything is perfect.

[softfruit]

"A platform Trump has been banned from"... hell even Fox News is nearly in that Venn diagram by now X)

[cosmolinguist]

It's so great how many things he's been banned from.

[davidgillon]

Imagine how much of a badass motherfucker you have to be to be a Black woman ASL user and get to the point where you're doing the presidential inauguration.

And be Captain in a Fire Department! https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958794316/firefighter-leads-the-pledge-of-allegiance-spoken-and-in-sign-language

"Hall was the first Black woman hired and assigned to a station at the City of Albany Fire Department, and then the first Black woman to serve as fire captain at Fulton County Fire Rescue. " And is a union leader on top!

[cosmolinguist]

I've seen a lot more since about some controversy around her sign, people mistook it for something official and ASL users said it wasn't good quality. Then it turned out when there had been a professional interpreter (who may or may not have stepped back for this bit? I'm not clear on that, and there was no possibility of watching the interpreter (or even getting subtitles! or of the audio description which also apparently existed) in the Twitch stream we were watching) and this person is the child of dead adults and was using Signed English. It's introduced me to all kinds of layers of experience and perspective on an aspect of accessibility I know next to nothing about.

[barakta]

I was thinking of you yesterday.

Low on spoons for Inauguration content or social media I decided that I would open up the feeds of 3 North American Disabled People of Colour that I follow on Twitter and look at what they were saying.

95% was like you, "it's not perfect, but today we celebrate and enjoy, tomorrow we hold Biden to account for past and future". I think that is fair.

I am delighted you found lovely root beer and have house-humans who understand importance and celebration as well as "Go the fuck to bed!".

[cosmolinguist]

Twitch didn't even have subtitles, a real disappointment in this house too, so you made the right choice because I can't se how you'd have gotten much out of watching it anyway.

They are very good house-humans, they know me so well. :) I didn't think watching this would be a big deal for me but it really turned out to be. And while my immediate exhaustion as soon as it was over was a surprise to me, it really wasn't to them. :)

[theandrewhickey]

Re: "This Land is Your Land", Pete Seeger later added another verse to his performances;
“This land is your land, but it once was my land/Before we sold you Manhattan Island/You pushed our nations to the reservations/This land was stole by you from me.”
In the live performance of that, he says “Woody wrote a lot of verses that did not get in the school songbooks—here’s one of them,” before the verse about the welfare line. I don't know if that other verse is a Guthrie one, but the "stole" is more Guthrie than Seeger...

[cosmolinguist]

Oh that is good, and good to know thank you.

[silveradept]

To still be here is momentous, and a collective letting-out of air. And, as you said, to finally feel like the work is once again possible, that we can move forward toward a desired world, rather than trying to fight valiantly against a disastrous dystopia. And while I do not expect Biden to go very far to the left, I do expect him to listen to the ideas coming from that direction and take them seriously and try to implement and shepherd the ideas that he wants to support through.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I read an interesting thing the other day that said while Biden is still not as far left as Warren and Sanders, he's moved to the left from where he was at the end of his time as vice president in 2016.

I'm really impressed that e.g. he's put racial equality on a par with the economy, covid and climate change as the pillars of his administration -- something, it has been pointed out, that Obama didn't do; I think he knew that if he tried something like that it would've come across as wanting special treatment for him and his, whereas this old white guy doing it certainly hits different.

And I'm encouraged too by some of the people Biden is surrounding himself with; he's including a lot of women, non-white people and etc. who seem to know their stuff and aren't just there for "woke points" or whatever. Representation isn't everything of course, vbut they're there not just representing their diverse backgrounds but bringing perspectives to the table that rich old white guys are literally never going to think of, and I am hopeful that those perspectives will be listened to.

[silveradept]

That's my hope, too, that the people on this administration will be there for more than woke points and their recommendations and actions will be fully supported. And that we can make real progress on systemic issues.

[swingandswirl]

It's not that I think the work is done, it's that I finally think the work is possible again, and when it hasn't been for years that certainly is something to celebrate.
This, exactly. It's a little easier to breathe without a giant pile of sentient ooze sitting on your chest.

I have to say, while Biden wasn't my top choice, more and more I'm coming to believe that he's the best POTUS for this moment - not least because he has eight years of first-hand experience of a functioning government, and several decades of experience in foreign policy. And I've been pleasantly surprised both by the boldness of his actions and his (thank goodness) refusal to capitulate to Rethug nonsense because of BS 'unity' and 'bipartisanship' nonsense. Then again, he had a front row seat to how the Rethugs treated his boss when he tried it.