Thoughts on the Inauguration
Inauguration day is probably one of my 2 or 3 least favorite days in every decade. My feelings on the whole exercise are probably best encompassed by a conversation I had the other day at a social function.
A couple of my many liberal friends were complaining vociferously about the upcoming Trump Presidency. After a while, one observed that I seemed to be insufficiently upset about Trump. Was I a secret supporter?
I said to them something roughly as follows: You know that bad feeling you have now? That feeling of anger and fear and exasperation that some total yahoo who you absolutely disagree with has been selected to exercise power over you, power that offends you but you have to accept? Yeah, well I feel that after every Presidential election. Every. Single. One. At some point we need to stop treating these politicians as royalty and instead treat them as dangerous threats whose power needs to be circumscribed in every way we can find.
Anyway, 8 years ago I felt absolutely the same way (proof here) but at that time I was out-of-step with most of those around me, and my liberal friends thought I was being some sort of racist pig. Now I act exactly the same way and they accuse me of being some sort of collaborator with the enemy. Lolz.
Shane:
Coyote you are old ... it is ... lulz :P
January 20, 2017, 4:55 pmMatthew Slyfield:
"Inauguration day is probably one of my 2 or 3 least favorite days in every decade."
Interesting, since there are 2 or 3 Presidential inaugurations in a decade.
January 20, 2017, 9:24 pmjoe:
I am a moderate fan of trump. I personally think he will be a significant improvement over Obama, especially if he has any luck scaling back the size of the government.
January 21, 2017, 7:28 amThat being said, The pomp and circumstances of the inaguration , the celebration atmosphere, the parties, inaguaration balls, etc, have gotten why out of line.
Mars Jackson:
This is very true. Jefferson warned us to always be on the lookout for tyranny from our leaders. Our standard position should be mistrust our leaders, not love and devotion. I was thinking that this inaugural pageantry seems out of place for our democracy as it really does feel like a coronation rather than hiring a new leader.
January 21, 2017, 8:54 amCC:
It is not just tyranny that one must watch out for, but misguided virtue, boneheaded ignorance, expediency, posturing, cronyism. All of these things can be destructive of the economy or civil society. These things also would benefit from reduced power of the government.
January 21, 2017, 12:26 pmOne idea I have is that anyone can contribute any amount to a candidate, but the candidate can't find out who gave the $. This way, you can't buy favors. We see, for example, that corporations often give to both candidates in an election. This only makes sense as a way to buy favors. Lots of campaign money would dry up, just like contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative (or whatever its called) dried up after she lost.
JTW:
indeed. Of course after Obama there's not much further down things could go.
But if he's even 10% serious about his comments to reduce government, Trump's going to be a breath of fresh air.
Enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I'm skeptical of whether he can achieve what he says he wants to even if he's honest in what he's said so far, but cautiously optimistic about the future. Something I wasn't with Obama.
January 22, 2017, 6:15 amErikTheRed:
I just respond by telling people that getting overly exercised over the particular species of ballot leech infesting the White House at any given moment is for the serfs.
January 23, 2017, 12:06 pmNehemiah:
You should have been there we me at Andrew Jackson's Inauguration. Now that was a party. The White House looked like a frat house the next day.
January 23, 2017, 12:26 pm