Like many readers, I spent much of Wednesday, January 20th watching Joe Biden take the oath of office as the 46th President of the United States. Other commentators have been much more eloquent talking about the symbolism of the day, and I don't want to use this space to get into political discussions. We all need a break and what has struck me the most about the end of this week is that while the events of the last four years have not lapsed into memory, it's been welcome to see government returning to more typical business, however gridlocked that business may be.
Everything about the past year has been weird. Our routines have been completely upended. Our routines outside of our houses, if they exist at all, have been seriously curtailed and our habits at home have completely changed. Things we used to take for granted like getting into the office a few minutes early, grabbing lunch with family or friends, or going to an art gallery or movie have gone by the wayside. We experience everything on screens.
Our lives are still happening, but we've found ways to work and interact with other people virtually, and that's a good thing. We used to joke about how wonderful a new invention or piece of technology was because we would never have to leave the house, and now that bit of laughter carries more than a little bit of truth to it.
It's changed the way we interact with events. One of the last things my wife and I did before everything shut down was we went to the opera. The year 2020 was the first year that I could remember when I didn't attend a single baseball game. But we've found new ways of doing these things. Watching "Hamilton" on DisneyPlus was a joy for us, and while watching football or baseball on a screen with no crowd there is jarring, we've still been able to have seasons of games with meaningful events and experiences.
Which brings me to the inauguration. My wife and I were talking the other day about whether, without the pandemic and the post-insurrection security, we would have gone into downtown Washington for the festivities and we both agreed we still would have avoided the crowds and stayed home. And watching the ceremony on TV, while one could miss the noise of the crowd, the Mall festooned with fields of flags was as beautiful sight on its own. The speeches, not limited to President Biden's inaugural, but also Amanda Gorman's magnificent poem "The Hill We Climb," and also the invocation, benediction, and speeches by inaugural committee members, all served to create an image of what are democracy means here and now.
What it all made me think of is the funeral oration of Pericles, which we learned in college was one of the foundational documents of any understanding of democracy, the equality under it which we all expect, and our responsibilities to one another.
There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
This blog is mostly about images, but it's important to recognize that as valuable and important as visual images are, those that we create in our minds' eyes are also essential. "Democracy" means something different to everyone, but just as Thucydides wrote about how Pericles invoked Athens's war dead to show the greatness of its democracy, we could see the image of flags reflecting the hundreds of thousands of Americans lost to the pandemic as a reminder of what we all are struggling against.
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