In Anticipation of Tomorrow

There have been many memorable inaugural addresses over the long history of this nation. The best of those quieting our trepidation or calling on us to be our best selves, to be citizens of a just and compassionate world.

Echoes ring of President Lincoln's "with malice towards none with charity for all" as he surveyed the landscape of a nation torn asunder by four years of a most uncivil war, asking of us “to bind up the nation's wounds... to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Or Franklin Roosevelt, our country in the throes of a terrible depression in 1933, reassuring a deeply worried United States that "This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Of this much there is an unequivocal certainty, the address given tomorrow will contain none of the soaring rhetoric, none of the fervent call for national unity, none of the calming voice intended to heal our wounds and soothe our souls.

If Donald Trump is true to his nature we will find neither joy nor comfort in his rhetoric. For he is a man not of compassion, not willing to offer favor to those who choose to challenge him, not given to bringing us together but rather dividing us for his own purposes and to feed his insatiable ego. Wounded by every slight, unforgiving at each turn.

In his first term address, his vision was of a dark and troubled land only he could save from ruin. Eight years later, neither Donald Trump nor his message have changed.

I well expect to be wholly underwhelmed, irritated and saddened by what Mr. Trump shall speak of tomorrow. Our nation made ever smaller by a leader without vision, wholly lacking the requisite and indispensable need to provide for and protect each and every one of those in his charge. Friend and foe alike and in equal measure.