I swore I wouldn’t look at even one second - not one second, I tell you - of Trump inauguration coverage, but of course I got up and turned on CNN as soon as I had coffee in hand. After five minutes, I switched to C-SPAN and then I remembered that C-SPAN 2 does unfiltered coverage of major events, so I watched a few minutes of blissfully silent video of the clear cold Washington DC streets between Blair House and the White House and the Capitol.
And I do mean clear. It’s a small consolation, and Trumpity Trumpsters will never admit that the sparseness of the crowds is a result of anything but cold weather, but I’ve lived here for a long time, and it’s always cold on Inauguration Day, and I’ve never seen anything like this. People are lined up no more than one deep along the barricades on Pennsylvania Avenue. There were actually gaps in between spectators - if you wanted to go watch the motorcade, you could pretty much stand anywhere you wanted.
It’s 10:35 AM. Trump will be President again in less than an hour and a half.
*****
Well.
I was texting back and forth with my cousin and sister yesterday. We’ve had an ongoing “Can you believe this shit” group chat since November 5. Finally, my cousin, a Philadelphia police officer, had to leave to get ready for work. She texted “I’ll talk to you guys later. I gotta go. Jesus Christ.” And with that, she provided my closing line for pretty much every conversation for the next four years.
*****
I don’t even know where to begin, honestly, except to say that I can’t get George Orwell out of my head. We’ve been a nascent oligarchy for 20 years now, but it became official yesterday, with a bunch of smug centibillionaires sitting front and center at the indoor swearing-in ceremony yesterday. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
And we all saw what we saw on the stage at my beloved Capital One Arena. I’ve seen every possible gaslight rationalization for what was clearly and obviously a Nazi salute, including my very favorite, which was that Elon Musk is neurodivergent and didn’t know what he was doing. I know a lot of neurodivergent people, and they all know a sieg heil when they see one. “The Party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
*****
It's Wednesday now and I'm back in the office, where the network is down for the second straight day. Weird, right? Probably just a coincidence. Meanwhile, I see that the President pardoned an international drug trafficker - a handsome well-educated white conservative Eagle Scout international drug trafficker, but an international drug trafficker nonetheless. It's fine, though. I'm sure that if Kamala Harris had won the election and pardoned Luigi Mangione on her second day in office, it would have been fine with everyone. I also read that we're apparently going to invest $500b in AI infrastructure. Let's not worry about actual infrastructure in a country in which a ship collides with a bridge, which then collapses. And where's the executive order on grocery prices? Will no one think about the eggs? Well, at least the broligarchs are getting their money's worth.
*****
We had tickets for the Capitals game on January 18, a Saturday night, against the Penguins, and we sold those tickets. Let me tell you that we don't skip a Saturday night game, and we don't skip a Pittsburgh game. But based on videos of MAGAs partying in Chinatown and Penn Quarter that I saw later, we made the absolutely correct call. Instead, we hung around a bar in Arlington with Saints parents and swimmers, celebrating senior day and a win in the pool. Absolutely the right call. And the Capitals beat Pittsburgh, so they didn't need us there anyway.
*****
Last Saturday reminds me a lot of the last Saturday before the pandemic really hit. On Saturday, March 7, 2020, I went to my son’s very first high school baseball game, a JV scrimmage against a much better team in Frederick County. I don’t remember the score, but I do remember that it was a chilly but clear and sunny early spring day here in Montgomery County, and that it was at least 15 degrees colder at Thomas Johnson High School, and the other mothers and I sat together, cheering on our freshman boys and kicking ourselves for not wearing warmer coats. Fortunately, we were all experienced baseball parents and we all had blankets in our cars. We needed those blankets. We knew, at that point, that the nascent pandemic was soon going to affect our daily lives, but we didn’t know how and we certainly didn’t know how long it was going to last. None of us had any idea that we were sitting at the last high school athletic event for the next year.
*****
For the foreseeable future, I will be doing Sarah Sherman’s Nosferatu hand gesture every time I make a stupid joke.
*****
It's Friday now. It was a week. No adjective will really cover it so I'll just call it a week.
I'm at Catholic University now, in the Raymond DuFour Athletic Center, watching Marymount vs. Catholic University. Marymount barely lost this meet last year in large part because their top fly swimmer had COVID and so the medley relay came in second. A relay is worth a lot of points. I got here just in time to see the relay win. The rest of the meet will be back and forth. These are pretty well matched teams. Meanwhile I need to run out of here as soon as my son's last event ends. A lot going on at work. A lot going on everywhere.
*****
Marymount lost to Catholic, although the men’s meet was very close. Spring sports will have to step up if we’re going to take back the Pope’s Cup. IYKYK. I was only there for about 90 minutes - I arrived just in time for the medley relay, and left just after the men’s 100 breaststroke, which my son won by .02. It was his second best time and at the end of this season, he will occupy 3 of the top ten 100 breast spots in the program record book.
I had planned to take the day off but I was needed at work and I didn’t mind changing my plans. It’s nice to be needed. On Friday morning, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get away at all, but my bosses and colleagues were willing to cover for me, and I was available by phone, and so I was able to get to the meet and see that amazing race. It was the highlight of this very very dodgy week. It’s Saturday now, and we have one more regular season meet today, against a very strong Mary Washington team. Just for a few hours today, I will pay attention to nothing else except what’s happening at Goolrick Pool at the University of Mary Washington. Go Saints.
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