Biden his time

Men go crazy in congregations but they only get better one by one – Sting, from the song All This Time

WATCHING the inauguration of the 46th American president on Wednesday, even Donald Trump must have said, if only to himself, “Whew! Thank God Joe Biden won the election, yes!”

How lovely Wednesday was, apart from on Fox News (which I think of as “Firetruck Facts News”) and rightwing radio and propaganda sites, where the hate is still being vigorously fanned. Even before the old Fat Nixon rolled out of Washington with his Addams Political Family, the air seemed clearer; you could almost not remember that, just two weeks before, Trump’s Red Hats, like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, had broken out a day of American Kristallnacht.

But you can’t ever forget that.

Watching Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the Capitol steps, at quiet moments, my imagination kept supplying a click-clack-thunk, the sound made familiar by scores of movies: the bolt of a high-powered rifle dropping a round into the chamber. I half-expected a circle and cross-hairs to appear on my TV screen.

You can’t rule anything out after Fat Wannabe Hitler opened a Pandora’s Box of so full of hate, it could deny the truth in a three-word lie.

Until Joe Biden hands over power, peacefully, four years from now – hopefully to President Kamala Harris, but perhaps to Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley – we won’t know whether the forces Trump unleashed did fatal harm to all of us.

Hate is fuelled by itself. Hate invites, and craves, hate as a response; because hate increases exponentially and in intensity when it is answered by itself.

The only thing that neutralises and defeats hate is love.

The world is already better off, after just three days of President Biden in the White House, than it was after four years of Fat Nixon/Hitler/Abu.

Trump, poor fella, has never known love, the world’s most powerful force. Hate (and fear) can find 75 million votes – but love (and hope) alone could find the 80 million needed to beat hate back.

Four more years of Trump would have poisoned the world. If, when he lost, he deliberately provoked sedition, what would he have done if he had won? The battle flag of the Confederacy might have been carried to the top of the Capitol, not just into its interior.

In my life, I’ve heard people boast that, if they were alive in the time of slavery, they would have been abolitionists. Or that, if they’d been Germans in 1930s Germany, they would have fought the Nazis.

And I’ve seen 75 million Americans vote for Trump, knowing exactly who he was. If he had won, Trump would have become the American Hitler. And black, brown & LGBTQ people would have become the American Jews.

To support someone who divides his own people is to wish the concentration camp upon yourself.

Trump will bounce back, in some way, no doubt – but in the nature of a dropped ball. He will bounce ever lower until he drops and rolls away. Criminal and civil litigation may make him as irrelevant to the majority as extremist far-right radio may make him central to the massive – but ever-shrinking – pool of wacky white supremacists.

Trump supporters, almost by themselves alone, will determine the nature of the world in four years by the candidate they choose for 2024. Trump himself is more likely to be in the Big House than the White House. But if Republicans remain as shortsighted as they are now, their nominee may be a Trump, or a Trump imitator.

Put a distressingly concise way, only the Americans who see, before 2024, what a colossal mistake it was to support Donald Trump can save all of us from the eventual domination of China. Only those who voluntarily dump Trump can prevent creeping authoritarianism from becoming racing authoritarianism.

Which is why Joe Biden is the only man of this moment.

Many of us want revenge against Trump and his Red Hats/Brown Shirts. Very many more see the importance of justice being seen to be done.

Joe Biden sees how short the time is. And how quickly the water rises.

If things get better four years from now, it will be because of millions of Trump supporters, who come to see how wrong they were.

And one man, Joe Biden, who alone now sees how right he is.

BC Pires is asking a lot of people who really thought they were doing something heroic in seeking to murder Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi.