I’ve worked in journalism for more than 4 decades (five, if you count an interview I did in high school with a WLS disc jockey named Larry Lujack).
This includes inaugurations.
Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second term in 1985 when the temperature was 7 degrees and the event was moved inside to the Capitol rotunda. From the Department Of No Kidding (also called “DONK”), it’s different now.
I stood on a side street looking at the Capitol yesterday, while thinking of the crowds I saw during an inauguration, including the last time when the topic was how many more people showed up as compared to Obama. We should have seen this coming.
I remember conversations with complete strangers, many speaking in broken English, as we looked at the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol Dome. It was a moment of “us” here in the U.S.
The optimist inside says it will happen again. The pessimist says yeah, but it’s going to take a long time. Put another way, different people need to talk to each other because though they are looking at the same thing, they are seeing it differently.