Vox - Inauguration Day 2021https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2021-01-27T16:09:27-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/219932882021-01-27T16:09:27-05:002021-01-27T16:09:27-05:00Trump is gone. But the threat of right-wing violence that arose under his watch remains.
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<figcaption>Armed protesters, who identified themselves as Liberty Boys, pose for pictures outside the Oregon Capitol in Salem on January 17. | Noah Berger/AP</figcaption>
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<p>Are we entering a new era of political violence?</p> <p id="5XGIsu">That the United States made it through President Joe Biden’s inauguration without any major act of violence is a relief. But the fact that we had to be seriously worried about it — to the point of deploying 25,000 National Guard troops to secure Washington, DC — illustrates that the threat of far-right violence is here to stay.</p>
<p id="41yBUo">Indeed, on January 27, t<a href="https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-january-27-2021">he Department of Homeland Security</a> issued a bulletin warning that the threat from right-wing extremists “will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration” — that extremists “may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.”</p>
<p id="JgMB1e">A country that once stood itself up as a model of liberal democratic stability is now beginning to reckon with the fact that it is at serious risk of a major wave of political violence.</p>
<p id="2VGfbR">Federal agents have been warning of a surge in far-right violence <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/21/i-warned-of-right-wing-violence-in-2009-it-caused-an-uproar-i-was-right/">since at least 2009</a>, but <a href="https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech">Trump’s malign influence</a> supercharged the threat. The Trump years have seen a flurry of deadly right-wing violence: the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/12/7/18131240/unite-the-right-murder-heather-heyer-james-fields-charlottesville-life-sentence">murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville</a>; 16 pipe bombs mailed to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/nyregion/cesar-sayoc-sentencing-pipe-bombing.html">prominent Democrats and media figures</a>; the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/18/20899208/tree-of-life-anniversary-pittsburgh-shooting-american-jews">mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue</a>; and then the Capitol assault, a literal attack on the democratic process by an armed mob fueled by bigotry and conspiracy theories. </p>
<p id="753hJT">As Biden’s presidency begins, Americans are faced with the possibility that we are entering a new era of political violence — one that Trump and his party have stoked for years. </p>
<p id="3jL0ca">There’s no way to know what’s coming, of course. Experts on terrorism and political violence disagree sharply among themselves on just how dangerous things could get. But there are clear reasons for concern. </p>
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<cite>Matthew Busch/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Scenes from an armed pro-Trump protest in Austin, Texas — one of many outside state capitols held on January 17.</figcaption>
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<p id="MvHdAV">“We haven’t really seen what I would call a sustained terrorist campaign in this country since the 1970s. [Today, there’s] probably a higher risk than any time since the 1970s,” says J.M. Berger, a fellow at the EU’s VOX-Pol research network. “I think after the last four years ... our capacity for resilience might be wearing thin.”</p>
<p id="GfANYM">In some ways, the fact that we’re even asking the question — are we entering a new era of political violence? — says it all. </p>
<p id="cwgQW1">Sustained campaigns of political violence don’t happen in a vacuum; they become plausible only when societies are rent by deep and serious cleavages. The GOP’s willingness to play with rhetorical fire — stoking racial resentment, delegitimizing the Democratic Party and the democratic process, and even indulging in naked appeals to violent fantasies — has created an environment that can encourage the outbreak of right-wing violence. This is already doing concrete damage to our democracy: Several Republican legislators have said they would have supported impeachment if doing so did not <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/13/22229052/capitol-hill-riot-intimidate-legislators">pose a threat to their families’ lives</a>.</p>
<p id="gZBy4w">This specter of violence hanging over our politics may prove to be one of Trump’s most enduring legacies, and a steep challenge for a Biden administration already facing crises on multiple fronts. </p>
<h3 id="IoDmxT">A new era of political violence?</h3>
<p id="DKrkfm">To understand the risks America is facing right now, it’s worth unpacking Berger’s note about the 1970s — perhaps the closest historical analogue to what could happen in the coming months and years.</p>
<p id="KH9jXO">Few today appreciate just how violent the 1970s were. The failures of 1960s radical movements drove a faction of the left toward political violence, leading to an era pockmarked by bombings, kidnappings, and other violent acts. </p>
<p id="szNgKj">According to <a href="https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_IdeologicalMotivationsOfTerrorismInUS_Nov2017.pdf">the University of Maryland’s START database</a>, there were more terrorist attacks in the US in the 1970s (1,471) than there were in the next 36 years combined (1,323) — averaging out to about three attacks per week for an entire decade. High-profile targets included <a href="https://time.com/4549409/the-weather-underground-bad-moon-rising/">the Capitol and the Pentagon</a>. In 1976, a California-based radical group placed a bomb in a flower box outside <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-feinstein-gun-control-20180328-story.html">Dianne Feinstein’s daughter’s bedroom</a> (at the time, the now-senator was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors).</p>
<p id="vnMKbh">Sixty-eight percent of these attacks were attributable to left-wing militants. Some of the most prominent and violent organizations included the upper and middle-class radicals of the Weather Underground, the Marxist Puerto Rican separatists in <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Terrorism_in_America/-3CuViIjqj8C?hl=en">the Armed Forces of National Liberation</a>, and a Black Panther splinter group called the Black Liberation Army.</p>
<p id="ecitkZ">Today, the principal domestic terrorist threat is on the right, not the left. While there certainly has been violence by left-wing individuals — like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/us/steve-scalise-congress-shot-alexandria-virginia.html">the 2017 attack on the Republican congressional baseball team’s practice</a> where then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot — repeated assessments from US officials and independent experts rank the far right as a greater threat than the left or even jihadists. </p>
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<cite>Ryan M. Kelly/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Pro-Trump demonstrators at a rally near the Virginia Capitol in Richmond on January 18.</figcaption>
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<cite>Stephen Zenne/AFP/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Members of the Ohio “boogaloo” movement gather near the statehouse in Columbus on January 17.</figcaption>
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<p id="bSLMuA">“That the far-right poses the most salient terrorist threat is no longer up for debate,” scholars Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware wrote in a November piece on <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/terrorist-threat-fractured-far-right">Lawfare</a>.</p>
<p id="oAOQvM">As in the 1970s, the threat today is not one large al-Qaeda-style enemy but a series of diffuse groups and individually radicalized perpetrators, all of whom are frustrated with mainstream politics’ inability to get them what they want — be it a white ethnostate or a second Trump term.</p>
<p id="zfr9q7">You have outright white supremacists and neo-Nazis, like Atomwaffen. You have anti-government armed groups, like the Three Percenters or Oathkeepers, who see themselves as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/1/5/10712084/oregon-militia-history-experts">defending Americans from perceived federal tyranny</a>. You have some “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/8/21276911/boogaloo-explained-civil-war-protests">boogaloo</a>” movement members and “<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch">accelerationists</a>,” who see violence as a means to destabilize and ultimately collapse the American state. You have the misogynist violence <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit">arising out of the incel subculture</a>. And then there are some harder-to-categorize groups, like the street-brawling “Western chauvinist” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/15/17978358/proud-boys-trump-biden-debate-violence">Proud Boys</a> or the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/1/17253444/qanon-trump-conspiracy-theory-4chan-explainer">QAnon conspiracy theorists</a>. These groups simultaneously have deep disagreements and some overlap; individual radicals may not “belong” to an organized group but find elements of multiple different ideologies attractive.</p>
<p id="PnqPlT">Were there to be a ’70s-style sustained terrorist campaign from such militants, the results would likely be deadlier. According to UMD-START, though there were about eight times as many terrorist attacks in the 1970s as between 2010 and 2016, that disparity isn’t reflected in the fatalities (172 versus 140). This is partly the result of tactical choices by the 70s militants themselves, some of whom <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bringing_the_War_Home/O34F9hWb5UcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22weather+underground%22+terrorism&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover">preferred symbolic bombings of unoccupied buildings</a> over actual killing. </p>
<p id="LdUTMI">Today’s far right favors bloodier tactics. </p>
<p id="evdOTu">The past few years of right-wing shootings — like the 2015 attack on Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the 2018 attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, and the 2019 attack on an El Paso Walmart with a heavily Latino clientele — were designed for maximum casualties, the perpetrators aiming to kill as many people from the groups they hate as possible. The Capitol Hill rioters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/us/politics/fbi-investigation-capitol-sicknick.html">bludgeoned a police officer to death</a> and allegedly aimed to do more; prosecutors’ court filings warn of plans <a href="https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-fort-worth-texas-e13a0ee09d543415d46c3f34a02f444b">to take members of Congress hostage and perhaps even execute them</a>. </p>
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<cite>Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Funeral services for Ethel Lance, one of the nine parishioners of the historical Emanuel AME Church in Charleston killed in 2015.</figcaption>
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<cite>Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Caskets outside the Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh, where the funeral for brothers Cecil Rosenthal and David Rosenthal — victims of the 2018 Tree of Life shooting — were held.</figcaption>
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<cite>Mario Tama/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Pallbearers wheel the casket of Angelina Englisbee, 86, a victim of the 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart.</figcaption>
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<p id="0O9ofr">The idea of a steady drip of right-wing violence in the years ahead seems almost too awful to contemplate. And, to be clear, it’s not inevitable — experts are divided on just how likely it is. Yale political scientist Stathis Kalyvas said that “I don’t think there will be much” violence in the coming years. University College London’s Kate Cronin-Furman, meanwhile, warned that we were in the midst of a “one-way ratchet” toward higher levels of far-right killing.</p>
<p id="dkj2E3">There’s evidence for both perspectives. On the one hand, the internet gives authorities a powerful new set of surveillance tools that can be used to monitor extremist groups. Moreover, the post-9/11 security state is very well practiced at disrupting terrorist plots as compared to the FBI of the 1970s. </p>
<p id="DmFcDH">On the other hand, the internet also allows for individuals to self-radicalize by reading extremist content to a degree impossible in the pre-internet age. In addition, the Trump administration has systematically deprioritized right-wing radicalism (as compared to jihadism) for years — to the point where right-wing radicals have <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-12-15/when-far-right-penetrates-law-enforcement">successfully infiltrated law enforcement agencies and the armed forces</a>. The day before Biden’s inauguration, two members of the National Guard were removed from DC security duties after <a href="https://www.wtol.com/article/news/politics/national-politics/inauguration/national-guard-members-removed-from-inauguration-security/65-d4906643-dc28-48e6-8d8f-89a4af647c38">investigators discovered ties to right-wing extremism</a>.</p>
<p id="EFB7gU">The Capitol Hill attack itself could go both ways — finally leading US law enforcement to take the threat of far-right domestic actors seriously, but also helping the far right organize and inspiring its adherents to future violence.</p>
<p id="BUMz0u">But perhaps the biggest outstanding question is the degree to which the far right gets encouragement from the political mainstream. </p>
<p id="TWCpTK">Only a tiny proportion of Americans are members of neo-Nazi organizations or Three Percenter militias. But Trump has proven uniquely effective at mainstreaming far-right politics. Whether calling the Charlottesville demonstrators “very fine people,” ordering the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” at a presidential debate, or telling the January 6 rioters that “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22217630/trump-capitol-riots-mob-violence-love-you-stolen-election-lies">we love you</a>” as they ransacked the Capitol, the president has made it clear that violent fringe groups are a part of his coalition. There is no doubt that this has galvanized the far right, promoting recruiting and encouraging those who are already radicalized to be more violent.</p>
<p id="GxrJE6">In the days following the January 6 assault on the Capitol, Politico reporter Tim Alberta <a href="https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/1348328968081072133">tweeted</a> that “the stuff I’ve heard in the last 72 hours—from members of Congress, law enforcement friends, gun shop owners, MAGA devotees—is absolutely chilling. We need to brace for a wave of violence in this country. Not just over the next couple of weeks, but over the next couple of years.”</p>
<p id="l6d4zh">The question now is how the mainstream Republican Party handles this threat of violence. On this score, we have few reasons for optimism. </p>
<h3 id="LtWPVS">The Republican Party’s delegitimization of Democrats and the mainstreaming of political violence </h3>
<p id="80LIyh">In 1964, right-wing radical Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for president — and the endorsement of both the Georgia and Alabama chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. When asked for comment, Republican National Committee Chair Dean Burch <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/540f1546e4b0ca60699c8f73/t/5c3e694321c67c3d28e992ba/1547594053027/Long+New+Right+Jan+2019.pdf">welcomed the Klan’s support</a>: “We’re not in the business of discouraging votes,” he told the Associated Press.</p>
<p id="qxzmic">Though Goldwater eventually overrode Burch and disavowed the Klan, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Before-Storm-Goldwater-Unmaking-Consensus/dp/1568584121">he did little</a> to distance himself from other far-right supporters — like the viciously anti-Semitic minister Gerald L.K. Smith, who praised Goldwater because “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/11/archives/gerald-lk-smith-still-in-business-rightist-continues-to-print.html">every Jewish journal is against him</a>.”</p>
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<cite>Library of Congress/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Ku Klux Klan members supporting Barry Goldwater’s campaign for the presidency at the Republican National Convention on July 12, 1964, in San Francisco, California.</figcaption>
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<cite>Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A Goldwater supporter in Lima, Ohio, in 1964.</figcaption>
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<p id="8y74yl">In a 2019 paper, the political scientists Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman find that <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/540f1546e4b0ca60699c8f73/t/5c3e694321c67c3d28e992ba/1547594053027/Long+New+Right+Jan+2019.pdf">the Goldwater campaign’s approach to extremism</a> “presaged a half century of Republican politics to come.” The conservative movement, and the Republican Party it has long dominated, was so preoccupied with its eternal quest to defeat its liberal enemies that it had no interest in seriously policing its own right flanks.</p>
<p id="HvTLF7">“The goal to smash liberalism came first,” Rosenfeld and Schlozman write, leading to “a politics devoid of ... internal checks on extremism.”</p>
<p id="cd4Toe">These two factors — the GOP’s all-consuming hatred of liberalism and its attendant unwillingness to police its own members — have not only pushed the party further and further to the right. They have created a climate in which Trumpism and its mainstreaming of the violent fringe can thrive.</p>
<p id="NNuYpb">For decades now, the Republican Party and the right-wing media echo chamber have been telling its faithful that mainstream Democrats are not just political rivals but an <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22217696/republicans-trump-capitol-hill-storming-mob-responsible">existential threat</a>. Just think about the things that have been said on Fox and talk radio in the past decade: Glenn Beck arguing that <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/13556876/glenn-beck-obama-trump">AmeriCorps would become Obama’s SS</a>, Rush Limbaugh claiming that Obama’s America was a place where <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rush-limbaugh-obamas-amer_n_288371">white children would be beaten while Black ones cheered</a>, and — of course — the spread of Donald Trump’s claim that Obama wasn’t born in America, something <a href="https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/xj7rpmvws8/econTabReport.pdf#page=139">56 percent of Republicans still believe</a>.</p>
<p id="wB6UPG">The defining essay of the Trump era is a 2016 piece called the “<a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/">The Flight 93 Election</a>.” Written by Michael Anton, a conservative academic who would later serve on Trump’s National Security Council, it compared the election to the single disrupted 9/11 hijacking — United Flight 93, in which brave passengers stormed the cockpit and forced the plane to crash before hitting its target (the Capitol). If Trump loses, Anton argued, America as we know it would collapse: “Charge the cockpit or you die.”</p>
<p id="uNlDva">That call to action in the face of an existential threat has animated conservative discourse for years. In their 2009 book <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Guns_Democracy_and_the_Insurrectionist_I/1kY_DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=joshua+horwitz&printsec=frontcover"><em>Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea</em></a>, gun policy experts Joshua Horowitz and Casey Anderson argue that calls to violence have become — via debates about the Second Amendment — an integral part of modern right-wing thinking. Republicans explicitly argue “that our constitution guarantees every American the right to prepare for armed confrontation with the government.” They note:</p>
<blockquote><p id="oXGzlu">In Heller v. DC, a [2008] challenge to the District of Columbia’s gun laws, the NRA, appearing as an amicus curiae, contended that one purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect an individual right to arm against the ‘depredations of a tyrannical government.’ The vice president of the United States and 305 members of Congress asked the Court to support that view. And in fact, in a landmark decision striking down parts of the District’s gun laws, the Court found that the Second Amendment includes an individual right to insurrection. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that citizens acting on their own are entitled to arm themselves and connect with others ‘in a citizen militia’ to counter government tyranny. </p></blockquote>
<p id="i1rr4C">For many conservatives, this is merely an issue of originalist jurisprudence: The founders believed this, and, like it or not, it’s how we must think about our gun laws, too. But if you live in right-wing spaces, told constantly by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22217696/republicans-trump-capitol-hill-storming-mob-responsible">politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and media figures like Limbaugh</a> that Democrats are tyrants in the making, why wouldn’t you conclude that the time for insurrection is nigh?</p>
<p id="G1RDTD">Some Republicans make this linkage more clearly. In 2016, for example, then-candidate Trump suggested that “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html">Second Amendment people</a>” might be justified in using force to resist rulings from judges appointed by Hillary Clinton. In <a href="https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2020/12/boebert-second-amendment-isnt-about-hunting-except-hunting-tyrants-maybe/33413/">December</a>, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted a tweet comparing coronavirus lockdowns to the “tyranny” opposed by the founders, following it up with an interview in which she said the Second Amendment is for “hunting tyrants.” </p>
<p id="vSVFg8">Trump and legislators like Boebert, <a href="https://www.axios.com/lauren-boebert-house-election-colorado-qanon-9fde24b3-805b-4137-a557-2f0d55724b0f.html">a QAnon supporter</a>, are not the type of people that the Republican establishment ideally wants to put forward. But in both cases, the party’s leadership could have repudiated the candidates after their respective primary victories and chose not to — because beating Democrats was more important than beating extremism. </p>
<p id="GA5jim">The Republican Party’s inability to self-police is one of the big reasons to be pessimistic about America’s ability to head off a coming violent wave. </p>
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<cite>Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO, center in dark blue) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA, center in red) stand with other newly elected Republican House members for a group photo on January 4.</figcaption>
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<p id="bcSh8Q">It’s not just that Trump is unlikely to be fully repudiated by his party; it’s that his extremist allies will remain party members in good standing. Sens. Cruz and Josh Hawley (MO), who helped legitimize Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election results, and the majority of House Republicans backed this effort; the most extreme ones, like Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), have only gotten more prominent since the Capitol Hill attack. </p>
<p id="C2F0op">“We’ve got previously fairly mainstream-ish GOP politicians emboldened to directly undermine the Constitution; we’ve got MAGA fools feeling empowered to make more and more explicit threats,” Cronin-Furman says. </p>
<p id="5Qkv5S">“In the current climate, they’re deriving increasing benefits from their actions and paying basically no costs.”</p>
<h3 id="KEqSjx">Democracy under attack</h3>
<p id="nPesBo">The most successful terrorist campaign in American political history took place after the Civil War.</p>
<p id="s5pkIe">Ex-Confederate soldiers and ordinary Southerners unwilling to give up on white supremacy formed a series of violent cells aimed at undermining Reconstruction. Their attacks, the most infamous of which were lynchings of recently freed Black people, aimed to disrupt racially egalitarian governments and impose costs on the North for continuing to occupy Southern land. The violence increased after Reconstruction ended, working to intimidate local Black populations while Southern states created new regimes that would render them second-class citizens.</p>
<p id="GH4mZf">Southern lynch mobs did not strike at random; they often targeted Black Americans in ways calculated to depress their political activity and empower the anti-Black Democratic Party. The journalist Ida B. Wells, <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/fear/unwritten-law">writing in 1900</a>, saw this clearly.</p>
<p id="a116ME">“These advocates of the ‘unwritten law’ boldly avowed their purpose to intimidate, suppress, and nullify the Negro’s right to vote,” she wrote. “In support of its plans, the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, and similar organizations proceeded to beat, exile, and kill Negroes until the purpose of their organization was accomplished.”</p>
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<cite>Harold Valentine/AP</cite>
<figcaption>Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, pictured above, was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992. He twice endorsed Trump for president.</figcaption>
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<p id="tUjbBr">Modern statistical evidence bears out Wells’s observation. A <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/rule-by-violence-rule-by-law-lynching-jim-crow-and-the-continuing-evolution-of-voter-suppression-in-the-us/CBC6AD86B557A093D7E832F8D821978B">2019 paper</a> in the journal <em>Perspective on Politics </em>found that the numbers of lynchings in a given county went down significantly after state-level imposition of Jim Crow statutes; in other words, the violence only declined after it had accomplished its ends.</p>
<p id="PMHNbh">Political violence is not part of a healthy democracy; it is its antithesis, used to accomplish ends that cannot be reached at the ballot box alone. But, perversely, such violence can be <em>used</em> by political actors in a democracy to get what they want — even if they do not have formal links with the violent groups, just a shared ideological affinity. This was part of the story of the South after the Civil War; it was part of America’s story in the Trump era, and may well remain one during Biden’s presidency.</p>
<p id="6MkPVz">In mid-January, Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) said that the threat of violent reprisal was a <a href="https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1349369689227603968">major reason more House Republicans weren’t voting to impeach Trump</a> in the wake of the attack on the Capitol.</p>
<p id="ntAqCc">“The majority of them are paralyzed with fear,” Crow said on MSNBC. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears — saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.”</p>
<p id="LqiGEN">Alberta, the Politico correspondent, found in his own reporting that “<a href="https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/1349389150622019584">Crow was right</a>.”</p>
<p id="13x1fn">“I know for a fact several members *want* to impeach but fear casting that vote could get them or their families murdered,” Alberta writes. “Numerous House Republicans have received death threats in the past week.” </p>
<p id="cKlprw">This fear did not only affect the impeachment vote. Rep. Pete Meijer (R-MI) has said that he personally knows <a href="https://reason.com/2021/01/08/amash-successor-peter-meijer-trumps-deceptions-are-rankly-unfit/">several House Republicans</a> who wanted to vote to certify Biden’s 2020 electoral win but were afraid for their lives if they chose to do so.</p>
<p id="NFkV3D">We do not actually need a huge spike in far-right violence for it to be politically impactful. The mere threat of future violence can poison a democracy.</p>
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<cite>Winslow Townson/AP</cite>
<figcaption>Armed Trump supporters stand in front of the New Hampshire Statehouse in Concord on January 17.</figcaption>
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<cite>Noah Berger/AP</cite>
<figcaption>Self-described Liberty Boys, an anti-government group, stand outside the Oregon Capitol in Salem on January 17.</figcaption>
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<p id="fS7LMm">And the problem is self-replicating. If more moderate Republicans are afraid to speak up, extremists will increasingly speak for the party. The more the extremists speak for the party, the more they will push Republicans voters to the far right and embolden violent far-right actors, further intimidating moderate voices from speaking out.</p>
<p id="s23HXI">This is one key difference from the political dynamics of the 1970s. Back then, <a href="https://twitter.com/yeselson/status/1347995541049847810">no significant faction of the Democratic Party</a> was aligned with the violent radicals. Today, large sections of the far right see themselves as acting on behalf of or in conjunction with the Trumpist forces in the Republican Party. In footage of Capitol Hill mobbers ransacking the Senate floor, one attacker justifies his actions by saying “<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/ted-cruz-would-want-us-to-do-this-capitol-rioter-tells-maga-mob-pals-in-video-from-senate-floor">[Ted] Cruz would want us to do this</a>.”</p>
<p id="YVb71d">“There seem to be enough guns, political support, and rhetorical space to sustain at least some degree of mobilization by violence-curious radicals,” says Paul Staniland, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. “It’s a lot easier to unleash carnage than to pack it back away.”</p>
<p id="ssvSXT">Biden’s presidency has not ended the threat to American democracy from violent radicals. There’s a real chance it could get worse from here.</p>
https://www.vox.com/22229753/violence-biden-inauguration-trump-right-wing-militiaZack Beauchamp2021-01-21T10:10:00-05:002021-01-21T10:10:00-05:00The uneasy comforts of Joe Biden’s inauguration TV special
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<img alt="Joe Biden Marks His Inauguration With Full Day Of Events" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9Dl22RB5g9xdpMeuP1Nwa9kf7n8=/275x0:4928x3490/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68699684/1297524784.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Joe Biden and Jill Biden watch the inaugural fireworks from the White House’s Truman Balcony. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>“Celebrating America” captured two versions of the US, separated by razor wire.</p> <p id="FabGo1"><a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22241362/joe-biden-united-states-inauguration-special"><em>Celebrating America</em></a>, the 90-minute concert/telethon/plea for national healing that aired Wednesday night to cap off Joe Biden’s inauguration festivities, had no reason to exist.</p>
<p id="eENCmn">Some moments were solid. John Legend’s cover of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” soared. (I’m a sucker for a well-deployed horn section.) Justin Timberlake and Ant Clemons performed a propulsive take on “Better Days” that wandered in and around and outside of the Stax Museum in Memphis. </p>
<p id="CXpDQ2">Other moments were less than solid. For as amazing as the backdrop of actual fireworks looked on TV, Katy Perry’s performance of “Firework” showed her in not particularly great voice. Tom Hanks was weirdly stiff all night long, in a way America’s dad rarely is. And how on earth did someone film three ex-presidents (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) having “an impromptu chat” without realizing they were horribly backlit? You could hardly see their faces because of the shadows.</p>
<aside id="3DuEHe"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"7 key moments from Joe Biden’s inauguration special","url":"https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22241362/joe-biden-united-states-inauguration-special"}]}'></div></aside><p id="bBRuiv">But also, like, who cares, you know? Unless you’re a mega-stan of one of the artists who performed (or Joe Biden, I guess), you probably weren’t paying particularly close attention to the particulars of the special, or watching it at all. (America’s No. 1 cable news network, Fox News, didn’t bother to air it, opting instead for its regularly scheduled lineup of evening seething.) <em>Celebrating America</em> existed because an inauguration special — usually with some musical performances and some speeches and some inspiration — always exists. Even in a time when social distancing regulations make big celebrations literally impossible, the show must go on. Does anybody have any better ideas?</p>
<p id="lXvDNc">And anyway, isn’t that kind of a metaphor for America right now?</p>
<h3 id="xTQBz7">Business as usual, in unusual times</h3>
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<img alt="President Trump Departs White House For Final Time In His Presidency" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UB_psWiPoye2vL0z1bzsGBeQOlU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22249650/1230689412.jpg">
<cite>Eric Thayer/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Donald and Melania Trump depart the White House on the morning of January 20.</figcaption>
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<p id="r11AFg"><em>Celebrating America</em> had a particularly tricky tonal balance to strive for. It could be neither so morose as to be off-putting to a nation hoping for better days ahead, nor so hopeful as to be off-putting to a nation living through the exact opposite of those better days. The special sort of settled for “neither” and “both” at the same time, which was as awkward as you might expect. Mostly, the special was <em>there</em>. It was a thing you could turn on to remind yourself of a time when everything seemed vaguely functional.</p>
<p id="Qoi62M">Joe Biden’s election to the highest office in the land has spurred all sorts of fraught conversation, both publicly and privately, about what it actually means. Is America the country that elected Obama twice (and Biden once) or the country that elected Trump that one time? Is it a country of center-left technocratic wonks being dragged slowly leftward by an increasingly raucous leftist movement, or a country of angry white resentment forcing everyone to hurtle off a cliff? </p>
<p id="K1cMOC">But the answer here, too, is “neither” and “both.” Quite clearly, the US elected Obama, Trump, and Biden, across three consecutive presidential elections. So we are both versions of the country described above. But we’re also neither, because the Electoral College gives Republicans a substantial enough advantage that Biden’s massive win in the popular vote could have easily been erased via a handful of different votes in a handful of states. After all, the popular vote winner in 2016 was Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate. The truth is trickier than a simple either/or.</p>
<p id="MSfg9v">That “both or neither” distinction was present all throughout Inauguration Day, which felt at all times like a newly elected president and his team trying their very best to pretend that everything was normal, despite very little being normal. Yes, they insisted, the challenges we face are substantial, and for sure, they acknowledged, we are as divided as we have ever been as a nation. But look! The peaceful transfer of power still exists! Pay no attention to the insurrection that happened two weeks ago!</p>
<p id="wAgeWS">The thing is: Nurturing a feeling of cautious hope is probably the right strategy. I am under no illusions that Joe Biden is going to accomplish anything I believe would actually move this country forward. But for anyone on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum, simply not having Donald Trump in the White House brings with it a sense of relief. Say what you will about Biden, but he knows where the keys are for everything in the government. He’ll (hopefully!) do a much better job of distributing the Covid-19 vaccine than the prior administration did. That, alone, will be a worthy accomplishment.</p>
<p id="r7zBMy">But I’m not sure that <em>Celebrating America</em> sold anything to me other than “Joe Biden is not Donald Trump.” And that’s true — he’s not. But shouldn’t there have been more to it than that?</p>
<h3 id="5KwYlX">A sigh of relief makes sense in this moment. But we can’t lose sight of America’s identity crisis. </h3>
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<cite>Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Razor wire surrounds the US Capitol in the lead-up to the inauguration.</figcaption>
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<p id="l5Uhu2"><em>Celebrating America</em> — and Inauguration Day more generally — were full of people talking about America battling some of its greatest foes ever. And textually, those people were mostly referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is killing Americans at a staggering rate. But subtextually, it wasn’t hard to read the TV special specifically as an evening-long sigh of relief from assorted celebrities and the regular folks roped in to introduce those celebrities. “Oh, thank god,” I can only assume they exclaimed after that sigh. “Trump isn’t president anymore.”</p>
<p id="pJk3tA">I feel that sigh of relief, deep in my bones. I do. Trump threatened so many things and so many people who are deeply important to me, and one of Biden’s first acts in the Oval Office was to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-preventing-and-combating-discrimination-on-basis-of-gender-identity-or-sexual-orientation/">sign an executive order</a> protecting the employment rights of queer people throughout the country. That’s not nothing! It will help so many of my dearest friends and loved ones! That’s tremendous!</p>
<p id="OkGFOn">And yet there is also a vague and pervasive sense of fear, one felt by plenty of us who believe Trump wasn’t a unique figure in American politics, but rather the figurehead of a massive, angry movement that isn’t going to suddenly disappear. That fear takes the form of so many of the people who helped Biden clinch the presidency stepping back, looking at the Trump years, and saying, “Huh. That was weird. Thank goodness it’s over!” before going about their lives. </p>
<p id="O1El5p">The work of politics is long and agonizing and boring, and it requires constant, constant, constant advocating for the country you want to see, not just the one you happen to live in. I don’t blame anybody for taking a break from that. We all <em>should</em> take breaks from that to rest and be with loved ones and be human. And it’s necessary to have hope: Believing the world might be better than it is right now is essential, and those flames only stay lit if you keep feeding them with the tiny beauties of everyday life.</p>
<p id="QbZn7r">But in the meantime, it’s worth listening a little less to the parts of ourselves that say, “Huh. That was weird! Thank goodness it’s over!” and listen more to the people who seem as if they’ve just barely hung on to the edge of a cliff for the past four years. </p>
<p id="7qhI0e">Or, put another way, we must focus not just on the inauguration itself or on a star-studded and perfectly pleasant TV special, but also on the razor wire surrounding the Capitol, lest anybody try to storm it once again. We must focus on the National Guard troops, firearms at the ready, standing by. Seen from one point of view, America is a country undergoing yet another peaceful transfer of power; seen from another, it’s a country just barely keeping itself together. When the rituals of democracy are more important than democracy itself, it becomes too easy for democracy to erode.</p>
<p id="ycaYsR">America is a shared story, one told by all of its citizens together, hopefully driving toward the same ends. But the past four years have more than driven home the idea that we <em>aren’t</em> all living in the same narrative. If you flipped away from <em>Celebrating America</em> on Wednesday night, you might have seen Sean Hannity ranting about Hunter Biden’s laptop and its supposedly horrible contents. </p>
<p id="rl1ewL">The special was fine, I guess (okay, it was largely boring), but it mostly seemed to exist because it was supposed to exist. I am not convinced that you can create unity by carrying on as if performing the right rituals will make America a foregone conclusion, a shared ideal that prevails through everything thrown at it, an end that is also the means.</p>
<p id="ETPrNF">Acting like America is a foregone conclusion is a smart idea in the short term, because it helps Biden assume power in a historically shaky time. It reassures a people who have been through <em>a lot</em>. It makes us feel safe to bet on the country’s continued existence for at least the next four years, but what then? If we’re really unraveling in the way we seem to be, it’s going to take a lot more than faith to turn things around. </p>
<p id="NmAOiX">America continues to exist because it has existed as long as any of us has been alive, and because the alternative is too horrifying and unthinkable. But it probably needs to change substantially — like in ways where we might cease to recognize it, just a little bit — to survive in its current form. So which is it? Both? Neither?</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/22241884/joe-biden-inauguration-special-celebrating-americaEmily St. James2021-01-20T23:10:00-05:002021-01-20T23:10:00-05:007 key moments from Joe Biden’s inauguration special
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<figcaption>President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden watch fireworks from the White House alongside family members. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Joe Biden’s inauguration special attempted a return to normalcy.</p> <p id="18aBix"><a href="https://www.vox.com/22239870/biden-administration-winners-losers-poet">While President Joe Biden’s inauguration</a> was unlike any other, his messaging repeatedly spoke to a familiar theme: a return to normalcy. </p>
<p id="Sd4h2C">And in a music special Wednesday night, he stressed it even more — with performances from Bon Jovi, John Legend, and Demi Lovato, which called for people to come together for a more hopeful future. </p>
<p id="zOLOXA">The event capped off a packed day — including executive actions and press briefings — for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who are moving swiftly ahead on their agenda as they retake the White House. Led by a somber Tom Hanks at the Lincoln Memorial, it also celebrated the labor of essential workers across the country, and featured a cameo from three former presidents. </p>
<p id="jml3Bq">Faced with daunting public health and economic crises, Republican opposition in Congress, and a significant segment of the electorate who still has questions about the president’s victory, Biden’s administration has a lot of challenges to tackle as it gets underway. </p>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Katy Perry performs during the <em>Celebrating America</em> event.</figcaption>
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<p id="o49wmm">Wednesday’s event attempted to set an optimistic tone for how they plan to go about doing it. </p>
<p id="q1IuUB">“This is a great nation. We’re good people,” Biden said in his evening remarks. “And [to] overcome the challenges in front of us … requires us to come together in common love that defines us as Americans.”</p>
<p id="ohN2Bd">We pulled together the evening’s most notable moments. </p>
<h3 id="oNp4a3">When celebrities came back to the White House</h3>
<p id="eRVz3p">It’s hard to remember this, post-Trump, but it was once possible for a celebrity to present a performance at the White House as a politically neutral act. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, he entered amid the lingering controversy of <em>Bush v. Gore</em>, but <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1438397/ricky-destinys-child-lyle-lovett-welcome-bush-to-white-house/">Destiny’s Child played a concert</a> for his inauguration weekend without backlash. “I wanna hear you say Bush!” called Beyoncé at one point.</p>
<p id="wE43Sn">That era reached a pointed end in 2017, when Donald Trump took office. A-list celebrities, who had overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, boycotted the inauguration, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/19/14166206/donald-trump-inauguration-concert-celebrity-performers">with one celeb after another</a> announcing that they would refuse to perform for Trump.</p>
<p id="m2nZ6A">But now Trump is out of Washington. And in this brave new Biden era, Hollywood has reembraced the White House. </p>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Eva Longoria.</figcaption>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Bruce Springsteen.</figcaption>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Luis Fonsi and DJ Cassidy.</figcaption>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Kerry Washington.</figcaption>
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<p id="dK9u1R">Biden’s star-studded inaugural concert is a case in point of our new cultural landscape. Right now, the most powerful figures in popular culture are willing to ally with the most powerful figures in politics. It’s a mingling of soft power and hard power that sees both sides lending each other their cultural capital in service of a common aesthetic — and that aesthetic is, both traditionally and very much so today, one of a slight cornball sentimentality. </p>
<p id="ktC4Uo">It’s flag pins on your lapel. It’s Bruce Springsteen gently crooning above an acoustic guitar on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s Jon Bon Jovi singing directly into the camera in front of a seascape at sunrise. It’s the Foo Fighters solemnly instructing us to learn to love again. It’s Lin-Manuel Miranda and Joe Biden reciting Seamus Heaney <em>together</em>, in unison. It’s Katy Perry singing “Firework” as actual fireworks go off in the background.</p>
<p id="hYAzIe">That sentimentality can be a powerful force. For many, it’s profoundly welcome after the four years of intermittent rage and despair so many people experienced during the Trump administration. A bunch of powerful people who might have their flaws but would also like to champion some sort of basic decency and kindness is something we can surely all get behind. Who doesn’t like sunrises and beaches and Bruce Springsteen? Who doesn’t like calls for kindness? </p>
<p id="adR06i">At its very best, this sentimentality can create a moment of catharsis like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/19/22239594/joe-biden-inauguration-covid-19-memorial">Tuesday night’s national mourning for those lost to Covid-19</a>, which featured Yolanda Adams singing “Hallelujah” and was our first nationwide public acknowledgment of the human cost of the pandemic. We need sentiment in moments like that, to acknowledge the terrible grief we are all experiencing. Or it can create a moment of pure ecstatic release, like John Legend channeling Nina Simone to sing “Feeling Good” on the National Mall on Wednesday night.</p>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>John Legend.</figcaption>
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<p id="w64Fzr">But the sentimentality that Hollywood and the White House create together can also be anesthetizing. It is a sentiment of a return to status quo that, after four years of concerted destructive effort by the Trump administration, feels increasingly unsustainable.</p>
<p id="VKetOz">“Corniness is comforting, and decent, and old-fashioned,” <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/biden-inauguration-fashion">wrote Rachel Tashjian at GQ after Wednesday’s inauguration</a>. “It can be effective, and on Wednesday, it nearly was, but for many of us, it will be a long time before coordinated purple suits and Garth Brooks trying to unify America in song will make us feel anything but scared and exhausted. It is change, not normalcy, that many Americans seek.”</p>
<p id="SunTZL">Power by its nature wants to protect itself, not to change the circumstances under which it flourishes. When Hollywood and the White House combine forces, they wield enormous social power. Tonight, they used that power to celebrate the idea of returning to normalcy after four years of chaos. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be able to apply the same power to get to something better than normal.</p>
<p id="ajaYcx"><em>—Constance Grady</em></p>
<h3 id="R7JCVG">When Brayden Harrington channeled JFK</h3>
<p id="tzSuEp">Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy from New Hampshire, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/20/21377640/democratic-convention-dnc-videos-jacquelyn-joe-biden-brayden-harrington">stole the show</a> at this summer’s Democratic National Convention when he appeared in a heart-stoppingly sweet video to talk about how Biden helped him with his stutter. “Without Joe Biden I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” Brayden said.</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Proud to have Brayden Harrington join us to recite President Kennedy's powerful words. Like our new <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>, Brayden leads with the power of his speech.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Inauguration2021?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Inauguration2021</a> <a href="https://t.co/BWQ3RnZkMN">pic.twitter.com/BWQ3RnZkMN</a></p>— Biden Inaugural Committee (@BidenInaugural) <a href="https://twitter.com/BidenInaugural/status/1352073524358201344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2021</a>
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<p id="ynlY05">Brayden came back to share his voice during <em>Celebrating America</em>, reciting a portion of JFK’s inaugural address. He sounded great. Good job, Brayden!</p>
<p id="HEX0L9"><em>—CG</em></p>
<h3 id="0vYuIS">The UPS guy and all the real people highlighted</h3>
<p id="QUThh2">“And now, I have a very special delivery for you from Miami … Jon Bon Jovi.” It was an introduction to the star delivered not by a politician or a fellow celebrity on Wednesday night, but instead by Anthony Gaskin, a UPS driver from Virginia. During a star-studded event, ordinary people also got top billing.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Local UPS driver and Chesterfield neighborhood fav gets speaking part in "Celebrating America" Inauguration Special. Big night for Anthony Gaskin <a href="https://twitter.com/8NEWS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@8NEWS</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZEWA7orzaC">pic.twitter.com/ZEWA7orzaC</a></p>— Kerri O'Brien (@Kerri8News) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kerri8News/status/1352071708455428096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2021</a>
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<p id="CXWY6c">The primetime event featured 8-year-old Cavanaugh Bell from Maryland, who makes care packages for the elderly and started a food pantry in his community, and Sarah Fuller of Texas, a senior at Vanderbilt University <a href="https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2021/01/19/presidential-inauguration-to-feature-vanderbilt-senior-sarah-fuller/">who just become the first woman</a> to play and score points for a Division I football team in the Power 5. It also highlighted 8-year-old Morgan Marsh-McGlone from Wisconsin, who started a virtual lemonade stand during the pandemic to help her fellow students who didn’t have enough to eat, and Sandra Lindsay from New York, who works at Northwell Health and was the first American to get a Covid-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial. Performances, appearances, and speeches from ordinary people were scattered throughout the virtual parade earlier in the day as well.</p>
<p id="WmyAju">Biden seems to have learned from the success of including ordinary Americans in the virtual Democratic National Convention last summer, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/20/21377640/democratic-convention-dnc-videos-jacquelyn-joe-biden-brayden-harrington">which featured a multitude of regular people talking about then-nominee Biden</a>.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/vucommodores?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vucommodores</a> Sarah Fuller introduces the new Vice President Kamala Harris in a taped message during tonight’s “Celebrating America” program as part of the Inauguration festivities.<a href="https://twitter.com/WSMV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WSMV</a> <a href="https://t.co/NWn7bhUvWl">pic.twitter.com/NWn7bhUvWl</a></p>— Chris Harris (@ChrisHarrisWSMV) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisHarrisWSMV/status/1352081099946663937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2021</a>
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<p id="logBAy">Trying to bring politics and policy to life through the lens of regular citizens is hardly a new phenomenon — politicians on the campaign trail often relay stories about voters to get across a certain point. But as much as the pandemic has taken away from the political process and so many facets of American life, one thing it has brought about in television formats like this is showing average people on screen and in real life. Politics can feel abstract, especially during a pandemic when it’s been months since people in America have been able to gather, and putting non-politicians and non-celebrities on screen grounds the moment in reality.</p>
<p id="W6ljEd">Sometimes, the real people stuff can feel corny and contrived — it’s not like these people were randomly plucked off the street. But of all the Covid-19-induced changes to the way Americans do political life, this is one that should stick.</p>
<p id="RQCeEE"><em>—Emily Stewart</em></p>
<h3 id="c7Ew6d">Kamala Harris on “American aspiration”</h3>
<p id="7zReV2">A daughter of immigrants, and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22231450/kamala-harris-vice-president-influence-role">first woman, Black person, and South Asian person to become vice president</a>, Kamala Harris’s inauguration sends a new message about what’s possible in America — particularly to women of color. In her first national address as vice president, Harris leaned into this theme, focusing on the power of “American aspiration” and movements that have worked to address inequities throughout history. </p>
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<cite>Joshua Roberts/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the nation.</figcaption>
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<p id="LNXBcB">“We are undaunted in our belief that we shall overcome, that we will rise up. This is American aspiration,” she said. “In the middle of the civil rights movement, Dr. King fought for racial justice and economic justice. American aspiration is what drove the women of this nation throughout history to demand equal rights and the authors of the Bill of Rights to claim freedoms that had rarely been written down before.”</p>
<p id="KXYjff">Harris also spoke of “American aspiration” in the context of the pandemic — as parents strive to provide for and educate their children under challenging circumstances, and members of communities seek to care for one another amid devastating tragedy. Like Biden, Harris tried to convey a message of optimism in a deeply dark time, citing the potential to keep on growing as a nation. </p>
<p id="68Cn7z"><em>—Li Zhou</em></p>
<h3 id="JG3Z7E">Three former presidents on the peaceful transfer of power</h3>
<p id="MpUeuD">Three former presidents gathered to put out a message that directly countered the misleading claims of the most recent commander-in-chief: In a casual video, former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton discussed the peaceful transfer of power that took place on Wednesday and emphasized the need for Americans to respect Biden’s presidency even if they disagree with him. </p>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama discussed the peaceful transfer of power.</figcaption>
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<p id="J6wWCR">“Your success is our country’s success,” said Bush. “We’ve got to not just listen to folks we agree with but listen to folks we don’t,” echoed Obama. </p>
<p id="4Y8De1">Their messages sought, once again, to convey the need for bipartisan support of the democratic system, as the country remains bitterly divided over the last election. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/11/22225531/joe-biden-trump-capitol-inauguration">According to a recent Vox/DFP poll</a>, more than 70 percent of Republicans questioned Biden’s election, and nearly half didn’t think he should be sworn in. </p>
<p id="TsLNNu">The former presidents stressed the commonality among Americans, as Biden faces the difficult task of trying to bring the country together. “We can have fierce disagreements and yet recognize each other’s common humanity and that as Americans we have more in common than what separates us,” Obama said.</p>
<p id="OOgVGX">—<em>LZ</em></p>
<h3 id="Qk31S0">American political life beyond Trump</h3>
<p id="DCU9g4">Did Donald Trump watch Wednesday’s primetime show? It’s hard to say. But part of what marked the entire event was the former president’s absence.</p>
<p id="pOQ71X">Trump, whose path to the White House was paved by his own celebrity, could never quite get the country’s A-listers on board with his agenda. In fact, it was just the opposite: Awards shows over the Trump years were marked by various <a href="https://abc7.com/brad-pitt-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-leonardo-dicaprio-john-bolton/5916383/">actors</a>, <a href="https://time.com/4668540/grammys-2017-politics-donald-trump/">singers</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/movies/spike-lee-oscars-speech.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront">directors</a> speaking out against his policies and encouraging people to vote (not for him), and influential people rallied against him in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. He had a handful of famous fans, but not exactly the most recognizable ones: Joe Biden has Tom Hanks; Trump had Antonio Sabato Jr.</p>
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<cite>Biden Inaugural Committee via AP</cite>
<figcaption>Tom Hanks hosts the <em>Celebrating America</em> event on the evening of Joe Biden’s inauguration.</figcaption>
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<p id="8osaCe">Of course, the Hollywood crowd leans left. They liked Barack Obama more than George W. Bush, too. But Trump has always wanted to be with the in-crowd, and he’s spent much of his life focused on being a famous guy. Wednesday’s spectacle likely irked him, and he couldn’t even tweet through it.</p>
<p id="qxLizE">But beyond petty tensions, what was striking about the evening was its tone: one of celebration, but also of relief. Bruce Springsteen opened the show standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Jon Bon Jovi sang “Here Comes the Sun.” Tom Hanks, America’s dad whom culture seems to have identified as The Man Who Will Make You Feel Better, hosted. A video of Obama, Bush, and Bill Clinton chatting together earlier during Inauguration Day was shown — a video that conspicuously lacked Trump, who skipped the ceremony.</p>
<p id="vE4W3O">The show was nice, and after four years of turmoil, it’s nice to feel nice. And part of the reason the night felt nice was because there was no trace of Donald Trump.</p>
<p id="aRuWRB"><em>—ES</em></p>
<h3 id="5KW0j0">The fireworks</h3>
<p id="CSBQ2Y">We’ve been through a lot of trauma lately.</p>
<p id="hvEDrv">Donald Trump was a deceptively sinister president. He had no emotional range and no capacity for subtle or complex policymaking. As Quinta Jurecic writes, Trump “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/trump-tedium/616485/">is a man without depths to plumb</a>.” It all seemed so predictable.</p>
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<cite>Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden watch fireworks from the White House.</figcaption>
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<cite>Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Fireworks are seen above the Washington Monument at the end of Inauguration Day for President Joe Biden.</figcaption>
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<p id="37rGIZ">Yet Trump had an endless capacity to surprise America with new assaults on liberal democratic values. An unconstitutional executive order might <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/1/28/14427288/muslim-ban-airport-protests">turn airports into epicenters </a>of protest on any given Saturday. Or a hastily announced policy might leave hundreds of Americans fearful that they’d be <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/26/21300761/european-union-ban-us-visitors-july-1">trapped for months away from their homes</a>. Even the January 6 attack on the Capitol, by a mob that Trump gleefully cheered on, was surprising. Yes, there was an <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/22233933/capitol-riot-warning-signs">enormous weight of intelligence</a> that should have warned Capitol Police to prepare for an attack. But no enemy of American democracy had breached the Capitol <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/06/us-capitol-building-washington-history-breach">since 1814</a>.</p>
<p id="Z8tYc5">For four years, many Americans spent every minute wondering what calamity would happen next. The curse of Trump’s terror wasn’t that America was constantly in a state of emergency, it was that many of us could never fully relax.</p>
<p id="g1E0xi">So there was something refreshingly innocent about Wednesday evening’s event. Hosted by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcwFeyrH2ww">America’s dad</a> and featuring a stream of all-too-wholesome performers, the event climaxed with the most unapologetically guileless celebration of America possible: Katy Perry, dressed vaguely like the Statute of Liberty, singing the song “Firework,” as approximately 2 billion shit-tons of fireworks went off around her.</p>
<p id="gXDhpX">Seriously, it was a lot of fireworks.</p>
<p id="lqmGqy">There was nothing lurking beneath it. There were no surprises. It was as pure and as childlike as it could be. It was perfect.</p>
<p id="ZIi6lr">—<em>Ian Millhiser</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22241362/joe-biden-united-states-inauguration-specialLi ZhouEmily StewartConstance GradyIan Millhiser2021-01-20T20:00:00-05:002021-01-20T20:00:00-05:00Bernie Sanders inauguration memes are liberal comfort food
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MxGGIboDsFwUrnNBmiILNt2H9ug=/640x406:3373x2456/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68697772/1230690429.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The Biden era began with wholesome Bernie memes.</p> <p id="WcspFl">Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presence at President Joe Biden’s inauguration did more than signal his support of Biden after a hard-fought 2020 presidential campaign. It proved that while Biden may have triumphed as the “relatable Everyman” from coast to coast, Bernie remains the “relatable Everyman” of the internet.</p>
<p id="gGImaz"><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/1/20/22240774/presidential-inauguration-oufits-biden-harris">Clad in a bulky brown overcoat</a> (immortalized in the “<a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1211784529129590784">I Am Once Again Asking You</a>” campaign video), Bernie spawned memes that proliferated across social media throughout Inauguration Day. He did so purely by showing up and being himself — looking kinda cranky, dressed-down, tired, and world-weary. </p>
<p id="hVNtJW">Basically, he encapsulated many Americans’ moods after the cascading horrors of 2020 and the first few weeks of 2021.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bernie dressed like the inauguration is on his to do list today but ain’t his whole day. <a href="https://t.co/wCRyoxU3V2">pic.twitter.com/wCRyoxU3V2</a></p>— Reeezy (@MsReeezy) <a href="https://twitter.com/MsReeezy/status/1351922521684254725?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="GAO18w">Particularly compelling to meme-makers was one photo of Sanders sitting huddled on his socially distanced chair at Biden’s swearing-in ceremony, looking like he’d claimed his spot and was ready to tailgate for the foreseeable future.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Got a terrific spot at Tanglewood, not budging <a href="https://t.co/yPCGhI25pY">pic.twitter.com/yPCGhI25pY</a></p>— Paul Grellong (@paulgrellong) <a href="https://twitter.com/paulgrellong/status/1351926609687715842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="hNLMOH">(<a href="http://bso.org">Tanglewood</a> is a famous Massachusetts performing arts venue and festival, a favorite destination of classical music lovers and other arty types.)</p>
<p id="kSuEo4">Sanders’s pandemic-appropriate isolation, his patterned brown mittens, and his vaguely dissatisfied “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ-LivK4-78">old man yells at capitalism</a>” expression — only partially visible above his surgical mask — combined to produce the meme of the day. Bernie sitting in his chair quickly came to stand in for the audience watching along at home.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">How I wish I dress: How I actually dress: <a href="https://t.co/8lAA8X7u78">pic.twitter.com/8lAA8X7u78</a></p>— jorden (@jordeeeeeen) <a href="https://twitter.com/jordeeeeeen/status/1351936400267112450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">How I feel holding down the booth at the busy bar when all my friends are late. <a href="https://t.co/X6JPdMC3qK">pic.twitter.com/X6JPdMC3qK</a></p>— Berrak Sarıkaya (@BerrakBiz) <a href="https://twitter.com/BerrakBiz/status/1351961273282519041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">“This could’ve been an email” <a href="https://t.co/kn68z6eDhY">pic.twitter.com/kn68z6eDhY</a></p>— Ashley K. (@AshleyKSmalls) <a href="https://twitter.com/AshleyKSmalls/status/1351929436128620547?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="S3PqsR">Look, Sanders is a vocal progressive in comfortable clothing who’s fed up with centrist politics — just like so many of the people who tuned in to see Biden take the oath of office and become America’s 46th president. That same relatability had previously been a huge asset during the 2020 Democratic primary, when Sanders’s campaign resonated deeply with large communities of left-wing viewers. </p>
<p id="QOr9OZ">Something about the image of Sanders earnestly asking for votes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAXutxWX7GI"><em>Notting Hill</em>-style</a>, while clad in unassuming, unpretentious earth tones made the resulting “I am once again asking you” meme a hit with millennials, Gen Z-ers, and Extremely Online people across the political spectrum. Even if you didn’t agree with his politics, it was easy to relate to the sense of world-weariness he seemed to emanate, as he once again asked us for everything from beer to <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1735325-i-am-once-again-asking-for-your-financial-support">belly scratches</a>.</p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B8AAB-XAB10/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">1 crispy boy pls @budlight #crispyboys #ImGettingPaidForThis</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shitheadsteve/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Shitheadsteve</a> (@shitheadsteve) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-01-31T22:00:10+00:00">Jan 31, 2020 at 2:00pm PST</time></p>
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<p id="Ve3GVk">By the time the primaries had concluded and Sanders was no longer on the campaign trail, he had started using the meme himself.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I am once again asking you to wear a mask.</p>— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1286789081750474754?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2020</a>
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<p id="uLiDbf">And after all the earlier hoopla around the last Bernie-wearing-coat meme, That Coat immediately turned heads when he showed up wearing it to Biden’s inauguration. So it was perhaps unsurprising that new memes began to emerge right away.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">BERNIE: what should i wear for the inauguration <br>WIFE: how about that jacket you wore for the meme<br>BERNIE: ok <a href="https://t.co/NgJW0quBqU">pic.twitter.com/NgJW0quBqU</a></p>— everett byram (@rad_milk) <a href="https://twitter.com/rad_milk/status/1351974452934840320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I have dedicated significant time to researching this, and must inform everyone that the Senator owns at minimum 3 whole coats. <a href="https://t.co/TERPL2BInS">pic.twitter.com/TERPL2BInS</a></p>— semi-pro woolgatherer (@earational) <a href="https://twitter.com/earational/status/1351938160599523328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="iVeajG">One eye-opening aspect of the Bernie inauguration memes was how clearly many of the meme-makers revealed their East Coast liberal or leftist roots.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">In Jewish yoga this pose is: waiting for my wife at Loehmann's <a href="https://t.co/Qik7wsZ0ad">pic.twitter.com/Qik7wsZ0ad</a></p>— Chandra Steele (@ChanSteele) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChanSteele/status/1351927821007003656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">NYC Instagram is so quick <a href="https://t.co/Br6TarGXXb">pic.twitter.com/Br6TarGXXb</a></p>— Rania Said (@rania_tn) <a href="https://twitter.com/rania_tn/status/1351949235424530433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="t35Wmw">Then again, Sanders is an East Coast democratic socialist, and the memes he spawns wouldn’t be as successful if we couldn’t picture him actually riding the subway, shopping at the local department store, or waiting on line.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bernie dressed to stand on line at the post office. <a href="https://t.co/tVgFQisnWy">pic.twitter.com/tVgFQisnWy</a></p>— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) <a href="https://twitter.com/ClareMalone/status/1351914310415638528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="M5yhhA">The inauguration came just two weeks after the surreal, terrifying January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, and the memes seemed to project that Sanders wasn’t there to celebrate in a difficult moment, but to get the ritual over with and get back to work.</p>
<div id="AyGzAl">
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">He said some of us have a JOB <a href="https://t.co/Jd162baBbU">https://t.co/Jd162baBbU</a></p>— 21 Lakyn (@OgLakyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/OgLakyn/status/1351925810752442375?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="uLGy0I">Just as they did throughout 2020, Bernie memes provided an Inauguration Day entry point for many Americans into a fraught political moment. There may be an extraordinary amount of uncertainty and anxiety around the near future, but Bernie and his reliable overcoat offer some much-needed familiarity, reassurance, and warmth (pun intended).</p>
<p id="ZYqdr6">In other words, Bernie is once again asking us to relate to him. And once again, America’s Extremely Online citizens have answered the call.</p>
<div id="jvXFFT">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="de" dir="ltr">bern <a href="https://t.co/XiAKRKLZT3">pic.twitter.com/XiAKRKLZT3</a></p>— Oscar Vega (@raspbearyart) <a href="https://twitter.com/raspbearyart/status/1351953606870618112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22241280/bernie-sanders-inauguration-day-memes-coatAja Romano2021-01-20T18:05:00-05:002021-01-20T18:05:00-05:00How world leaders responded to Biden’s inauguration
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<figcaption>President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden salute troops marching in front of the US Capitol. | Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The reaction to Biden’s presidency has so far been overwhelmingly positive.</p> <p id="eskGhK">Reactions to President Joe Biden’s inauguration are pouring in from around the world from US allies as well as adversaries.</p>
<p id="cjtNAI">From Europe to Asia, foreign leaders are making clear what they think of the new president and the country he leads. Their statements provide a glimpse into how the world perceives the newest arrival in the Oval Office and his plans for America’s reengagement on the world stage.</p>
<p id="JWvaPE">After a strained relationship with former President Donald Trump,<strong> </strong>Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union), <a href="https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1351831080366714880?s=20">tweeted</a>, “The United States is back. And Europe stands ready. To reconnect with an old and trusted partner, to breathe new life into our cherished alliance.”</p>
<div id="TgLvmC">
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The United States is back. And Europe stands ready. <br><br>To reconnect with an old and trusted partner,<br>to breathe new life into our cherished alliance.<br><br>I look forward to working together with <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> <a href="https://t.co/gc7HIIg2Z8">pic.twitter.com/gc7HIIg2Z8</a></p>— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) <a href="https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1351831080366714880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="ED8oD0">Adding to the transatlantic bonhomie,<strong> </strong>NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg <a href="https://twitter.com/jensstoltenberg">tweeted</a> his congratulations to Biden, adding that “none of us can tackle the challenges we face alone.” </p>
<p id="2D4H8O">British Prime Minister Boris Johnson congratulated both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris while affirming that “America’s leadership is vital on the issues that matter to us all, from climate change to COVID.”</p>
<div id="4g6r9R">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Congratulations to <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> on being sworn in as President of the United States and to <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> on her historic inauguration. America’s leadership is vital on the issues that matter to us all, from climate change to COVID, and I look forward to working with President Biden.</p>— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) <a href="https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1351934951520923650?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="0puLz6">And French President Emmanuel Macron sent warm wishes to America’s new leaders, pledging that the US and France “will be stronger to face the challenges of our time.” Macron further welcomed the US back to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22175698/climate-change-treaty-trump-china-eu-uk-paris-agreement-biden">Paris climate agreement</a>, which Biden is expected to rejoin through executive order later on his first day. </p>
<div id="z5upDP">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">To <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a>.<br>Best wishes on this most significant day for the American people!<br>We are together.<br>We will be stronger to face the challenges of our time. Stronger to build our future. Stronger to protect our planet. Welcome back to the Paris Agreement!</p>— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) <a href="https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1351955511814615042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="mzUh6e">But it wasn’t only European officials offering their well wishes.</p>
<p id="mIoGQj">Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2021/01/20/statement-prime-minister-canada-inauguration-joe-biden-president-united">statement</a> promising his nation would work with the US on the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery. He also pledged to work with the new administration to “advance climate action and clean economic growth, promote inclusion and diversity, and create good middle-class jobs.” </p>
<p id="lG2VIO">And South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/11/27/what-is-going-on-with-the-united-states-alliance-with-south-korea/">clashed with Trump over military spending</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/moonriver365/status/1352013087054827521?s=20">tweeted</a> his kudos to Biden. With a possible play on Trump’s MAGA catchphrase, Moon added, “America’s new beginning will make democracy even greater.”</p>
<p id="S7wf7D">Meanwhile, leaders who’d famously cozied up to Trump did their best to ingratiate themselves with his successor.</p>
<p id="yipSm1">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a <a href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1351947704918749184?s=20">statement</a> described his decades-long friendship with Biden and said he wanted to work on common threats, “chief among them, the threat posed by Iran.” </p>
<p id="RlZAa7">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that he hoped to “strengthen the India-US strategic partnership.” Modi sent separate congratulations to Harris — whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/22230854/kamala-harris-inauguration-mixed-race-biracial">southern India</a> and immigrated to the United States — on the “historic occasion” of her inauguration. </p>
<div id="l81qWN">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Congratulations to <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> on being sworn-in as <a href="https://twitter.com/VP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VP</a>. It is a historic occasion. Looking forward to interacting with her to make India-USA relations more robust. The India-USA partnership is beneficial for our planet.</p>— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1351945194023780353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="C4urO5">China chose a different way to commemorate Biden’s inauguration: by blasting Trump. Xinhua News, a state-run media outlet, tweeted an image of the US Capitol building with the words “Good Riddance, Donald Trump” in the sky above it. </p>
<div id="v9XBv0">
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Good Riddance, Donald Trump! <a href="https://t.co/kYNQ0jTCfH">https://t.co/kYNQ0jTCfH</a> <a href="https://t.co/UoDm8RIT6V">pic.twitter.com/UoDm8RIT6V</a></p>— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1351801624906252299?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="ecC7Nf">The world, then, is keenly aware of the momentous political shift Biden’s inauguration has signaled for America. </p>
<p id="1Dyoyh"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22240996/biden-inauguration-world-leaders-johnson-macron-modiJariel Arvin2021-01-20T18:03:12-05:002021-01-20T18:03:12-05:00The president’s international restoration project begins
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<img alt="Joe Biden wearing a mask." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UJazI0E41WEIZ6ALQkKu9QCQKCI=/166x0:4166x3000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68697148/1229776272.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>President-elect Joe Biden introduces some of his foreign policy Cabinet member nominees on November 24, 2020. | Demetrius Freeman/Washington Post via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The US is rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization on day one.</p> <p id="HzPhKr">President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/18/21334630/joe-biden-foreign-policy-explainer">international rebuild</a> has begun.</p>
<p id="kWtfaT">Biden, in the first hours of his presidency, rejoined the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22175698/climate-change-treaty-trump-china-eu-uk-paris-agreement-biden">Paris climate accord</a> and recommitted to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/11/9/21556172/trump-biden-transition-team-covid-19-who-join">World Health Organization</a>, fulfilling <a href="https://www.facebook.com/joebiden/photos/on-day-one-ill-rejoin-the-paris-agreement-and-then-rally-the-world-to-push-our-p/10157381578471104/">promises</a> he made <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1280603719831359489?s=20">during the campaign</a>.</p>
<p id="grIBsj">He is also taking the first steps toward achieving his <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/18/21334630/joe-biden-foreign-policy-explainer">larger foreign policy agenda of restoring American leadership</a> abroad. </p>
<p id="svo9Cj">But these day one orders are the easy part. Now Biden begins the difficult task of rebuilding trust among allies, and trying to prove America can be a reliable partner.</p>
<p id="jf7eMf">Over the past <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/26/21368750/trump-foreign-policy-plan-2020">four years of the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy</a>, other <a href="https://www.vox.com/22175698/climate-change-treaty-trump-china-eu-uk-paris-agreement-biden">countries have taken leadership roles on climate change</a>, and other powers, like China, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22187132/joe-biden-united-nations-china-trump">have moved to fill the vacuum left behind</a> by the United States in international institutions. </p>
<p id="81WGrs">Biden also confronts public health, economic, and racial reckoning <a href="https://www.vox.com/22235689/joe-biden-executive-orders-10-days-travel-ban-mask-mandate">crises at home</a>, along with the fallout from the startling attack on US democracy earlier this month. </p>
<aside id="HFu3hq"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Biden’s flurry of first-day executive actions, explained","url":"https://www.vox.com/22240617/biden-executive-actions-orders-covid-19-immigration-racial-justice"}]}'></div></aside><p id="SVlRry">The world watched the Capitol siege on January 6, and witnessed a <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-crisis-of-american-power-how-europeans-see-bidens-america/">US political system in disarray</a>. It framed Washington as far from a stable partner. But with Biden’s announcements on the Paris deal and the WHO, the US is showing that it’s trying to start somewhere. </p>
<h3 id="MJC0lT">The US’s recommitment to Paris will give the deal its first real chance</h3>
<p id="oIMMS6">Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/6/1/15724980/trump-paris-climate-agreement">announced the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord in June 2017</a>, fulfilling a campaign promise of his own. The nonbinding treaty sets standards for emission reductions in an effort to keep the global temperature from warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius. <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-action/">A total of 189 countries are party to the agreement</a>.</p>
<p id="TeCSAN">Based on the terms of the treaty, the US couldn’t officially step away from the deal until November 2020, though the Trump administration <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54797743">did indeed formally withdraw</a> last year.</p>
<p id="HIBd0Z">Biden is reversing that, and it’s a fairly easy reentry: The president writes a letter saying the US wants to get back in, and in 30 days, they will again become party to the treaty. </p>
<p id="cvgfA5">“That’s obviously, in and of itself, an important threshold, because it brings us back into the single collective international body dedicated to meeting the climate challenge,” Peter Ogden, vice president for energy, climate, and the environment at the United Nations Foundation, told me. </p>
<p id="PlrC31">Ogden said the US will ultimately have to recalibrate <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-action/">its 2030 targets</a>. That will involve domestic policy considerations, as it requires states, localities, and, most of all, businesses to achieve the benchmarks for curbing emissions. </p>
<p id="vBtKtz">Those targets are also incredibly important, Ogden said. “It will be both a practical guide for other countries who are looking to understand the kind of actions that the United States intends to move forward with,” he said. “But it’s also going to be an important guide for other countries, who are also looking at their own targets.”</p>
<p id="YDCvV3">Biden <a href="https://www.vox.com/21549521/climate-change-senate-election-joe-biden">has said climate change will be a priority of his administration</a>; he appointed John Kerry, former secretary of state, as the administration’s <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/john-kerry-biden-climate-czar">“climate czar.”</a> The administration is reportedly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/19/biden-environment-paris-climate-agreement-keystone-xl-pipeline">considering convening a global climate summit</a>. Rejoining Paris is, symbolically, the first act of Biden’s promise to make climate considerations a big part of his policy priorities. </p>
<p id="UWRzR8">More broadly, on climate change, the Biden administration can set the example of global leadership it wants, and collaborate with other partners, such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/22175698/climate-change-treaty-trump-china-eu-uk-paris-agreement-biden">the European Union and the United Kingdom</a>, who have continued to press forward with climate targets. The US, historically, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-biggest-carbon-polluter-in-history-will-it-walk-away-from-the-paris-climate-deal.html">has been the largest emitter of greenhouse gases</a>, and a real commitment to from the US on climate change, as Ogden said, would serve as Paris accord’s first real test.</p>
<h3 id="smlQYy">The Biden administration will recommit to the WHO — and global vaccine distribution</h3>
<p id="tx9tyV">Alongside the global threat of climate change, the coronavirus pandemic is still raging. Containing the pandemic, and undertaking a global vaccination campaign, will require unprecedented resources and coordination.</p>
<p id="jaHGmN">Which is why Biden’s second step — a recommitment to the WHO — is also critically important, for fighting the pandemic and for other global health priorities. </p>
<p id="QV1tsV">The Trump administration blamed the WHO for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and accused the agency of being a “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52679329">puppet of China</a>.” In July, the administration sent the World Health Organization <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/07/trump-administration-submits-formal-notice-of-withdrawal-from-who/">notice of its intent to withdraw</a>, which would have taken the US out of the body a year later, in 2021. </p>
<p id="l9f64E">Biden is rescinding that withdrawal, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/biden-executive-action.html">and is sending Dr. Anthony Fauci</a>, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, to attend the agency’s annual executive meeting this week. </p>
<p id="HDzvmr">But as <a href="https://cola.unh.edu/person/alynna-lyon">Alynna Lyon</a>, a United Nations expert and professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, told me last year, the US’s reengagement with the WHO is not as simple as it sounds.</p>
<p id="SxOhP3">The Trump administration’s threat of withdrawal severely threatened the overall funding of the WHO, which forced other countries, like China, to pledge to make up for the shortfalls. The Trump administration also tried to gum up existing cooperation with the WHO, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/09/coronavirus-trump-withdraw-world-health-organization-who-state-department-diplomacy-consequences-experts-fear-disease-virus-spread/">including trying to block contact between WHO officials </a>and US officials this fall.</p>
<p id="9StB3i">As Lyon said, the US is going to have to retool its relationship with the organization; it can’t just expect things to revert to back to the pre-Trump era. Other countries, specifically China, have filled the void left behind by the United States. </p>
<p id="RCKVIO">“They’ve had a seat at the table, they’re writing the checks, they are able to shape and frame and spin what the priorities are,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/22187132/joe-biden-united-nations-china-trump">she told me in December</a>. “The US is late to the game on this. It’s very difficult for the US to just kind of waltz back in and say, ‘We’re back.’”</p>
<p id="FMowFe">The Biden administration is taking another step to show it wants to work with other countries on global health. On Tuesday, Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state, said during his confirmation hearing that the United States would join <a href="https://www.vox.com/21448719/covid-19-vaccine-covax-who-gavi-cepi">Covax</a>, the WHO-linked initiative to deliver and equitably distribute the Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, specifically to lower-income countries. China joined the initiative at the last minute last year, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-raises-1bn-so-vulnerable-countries-can-get-vaccine">many of the US’s partners</a> have made financial commitments to the program. Russia and the US were the two big holdouts, until now.</p>
<p id="1TSF6D">So getting back into these global bodies is a good first step. It does send a powerful message to America’s allies and adversaries alike. But it’s also impossible for the United States to just turn back the clock. </p>
<h3 id="IxgHQN">Biden has said “America is back.” But what is it coming back to?</h3>
<p id="JWYDtE">Blinken also said at his confirmation hearing Tuesday that “humility and confidence” should be the flip sides of American leadership. </p>
<p id="AHBcF9">That humility should include a very obvious recognization that the world has changed in the past four years, and the multilateral institutions like the WHO have changed with them. Biden’s administration also needs to sell this vision at home, learning the lessons from the Trump years that it’s not a given that the US will be — or that the American public will want to see it be<strong> </strong>— the one setting the international agenda. </p>
<p id="l1dX9N">The recommitment to the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization are, symbolically, the Biden team’s first olive branches to the rest of the world. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/940807637/opinion-with-biden-america-is-back-but-not-at-the-head-of-the-table">“America is back”</a> — if the world will have it. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22238609/biden-inauguration-paris-climate-deal-world-health-organizationJen Kirby2021-01-20T17:45:00-05:002021-01-20T17:45:00-05:00The pro-Trump inauguration protests at state capitols were complete duds
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<img alt="A person wearing a MAGA hat stands on a sidewalk and leans on a sign that reads, “Stop the steal. Joe Biden: Traitor! Liar! Thief!”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZM8rAq9-gxJHo0C1N7N5C3wo_Q0=/162x0:2950x2091/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68696792/AP_21019830524758.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A Trump supporter holds a sign opposing President-elect Joe Biden in Olympia, Washington. | Ted S. Warren/AP</figcaption>
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<p>Some might even describe them as “low energy.”</p> <p id="zjYGK4">In the days following the violent <a href="https://www.vox.com/22220746/trump-speech-incite-capitol-riot">Trump-inspired insurrection</a> at the US Capitol on January 6, the FBI <a href="https://www.vox.com/22230932/trump-riots-capitol-biden-inauguration-states">warned all 50 states</a> that similar “armed protests” were being planned by right-wing extremists around their capitol buildings. But on <a href="https://www.vox.com/22240601/joe-biden-president-inauguration-day-in-photos">Inauguration Day</a>, at least, those protests turned out to be complete duds.</p>
<p id="IPxtAn">Not only have there been no incidents of violence at state capitols on Wednesday as of 4 pm ET, but at many of them, the number of MAGA protesters could be counted on one hand.</p>
<p id="wacpap">At the New York Capitol in Albany, Spectrum News reporter Morgan Mckay documented the presence of <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/at-ny-capitol-a-lone-trump-supporter-protests/2840361/">a single pro-Trump demonstrator</a>. </p>
<p id="vb8N2h">“He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed,” Mckay tweeted. (Thanks to Elie Mystal of the Nation for <a href="https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1351986467980140544">his helpful Twitter thread</a> putting the tweets that follow in one place.)</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest <a href="https://t.co/hDtCLYFpLq">pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq</a></p>— Morgan Mckay (@morganfmckay) <a href="https://twitter.com/morganfmckay/status/1351934178493935620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="5WBhxv">A similar scene unfolded at the California Capitol in Sacramento, where one man in a Trump cap protested as President Joe Biden was sworn in, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Later in the day, more sizable protests took place around the California Capitol, but they were <a href="https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/01/20/californias-capitol-on-guard-sacramento-prepares-for-possible-inauguration-day-protests/">left-wing protests</a> calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for immigration reform.)</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">At the State Capitol in Sacramento, a lone Trump supporter wearing a red MAGA hat protested as President Biden took the oath of office Wednesday. <br><br> : <a href="https://twitter.com/dustingardiner?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dustingardiner</a> <br><br>Live <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InaugurationDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InaugurationDay</a> updates >> <a href="https://t.co/WowWEMPI7l">https://t.co/WowWEMPI7l</a> <a href="https://t.co/QaSrlvomgd">pic.twitter.com/QaSrlvomgd</a></p>— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) <a href="https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1351955025959022598?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="WZghI8">There were three times as many pro-Trump protesters at the capitol in New Hampshire — but that still only amounted to three of them. And one-third of the group took off early, telling reporters “he was leaving to go skiing,” according to Dan Tuohy of New Hampshire Public Radio.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">All quiet at the State House — two protestors out front. A third person was here, but he told press he was leaving to go skiing. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nhprinauguration?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#nhprinauguration</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nhpolitics?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#nhpolitics</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InaugurationDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InaugurationDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/kxyfJmbg92">pic.twitter.com/kxyfJmbg92</a></p>— Dan Tuohy (@tuohy) <a href="https://twitter.com/tuohy/status/1351941121757351938?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="wOsoP5">A dozen or so protesters, some of them armed, did show up at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix, but Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed reported that it remained peaceful.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Trump supporters are now having a picnic. One guy is milling about reading 1984. Some have put up Confederate flags here in Arizona, the 48th state admitted to the Union. <a href="https://t.co/8HODm1rzLy">pic.twitter.com/8HODm1rzLy</a></p>— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) <a href="https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1351981604931997701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="F14dev">And a pro-Trump demonstration some 700 miles north of there at the Nevada Capitol in Carson City was similarly underwhelming, according to Colton Lochhead of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The scene just outside Nevada’s capitol complex in Carson City ~ half hour until the Biden’s inauguration kicks off. So far, just two older guys - Brandon and Matt - with signs\flags who are frustrated that more people have not showed up. <a href="https://t.co/rq2P0opYcs">pic.twitter.com/rq2P0opYcs</a></p>— Colton Lochhead (@ColtonLochhead) <a href="https://twitter.com/ColtonLochhead/status/1351932236405194752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="Lsd2Fl">You get the drift. Local reporters also documented how protests of Biden’s inauguration fizzled in Kansas: </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Two protestors on the southeast corner of the Kansas Statehouse. One told me he was disappointed so few people showed up. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kakenews?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#kakenews</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ksleg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ksleg</a> <a href="https://t.co/F2LTpozCOZ">pic.twitter.com/F2LTpozCOZ</a></p>— Pilar Pedraza TV (@PilarPedrazaTV) <a href="https://twitter.com/PilarPedrazaTV/status/1351932963194347520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="TX6XBY">North Carolina:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Found a third protestor outside the NC General Assembly in Raleigh. It’s a sleepy scene overall (aside from the considerable law enforcement presence)<br><br>As his sign suggests, Gary Morgan of Greensboro doubts the 2020 election results. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ncpol?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ncpol</a> <a href="https://t.co/OVUS02ICDY">pic.twitter.com/OVUS02ICDY</a></p>— Brian Gordon (@BrianSamuel92) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrianSamuel92/status/1351930386553724932?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="02RrQe">Minnesota:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">For those wondering: Calm at the MN Capitol. <a href="https://t.co/XnoqLLHo3a">pic.twitter.com/XnoqLLHo3a</a></p>— Dave Orrick (@DaveOrrick) <a href="https://twitter.com/DaveOrrick/status/1351956022500478976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="3hQpTi">Missouri:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The demonstrations in Jefferson City are modest, at best. A handful of Trump supporters, two guys with upside down flags on the Capitol steps, a few people with a non-partisan group calling for healing. <a href="https://t.co/SydjDcDi48">pic.twitter.com/SydjDcDi48</a></p>— Jonathan Ahl (@JonathanAhl) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonathanAhl/status/1351963666523049987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="9Nw8pT">Texas:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Only a few people outside the Texas Capitol Building in Austin. Thomas Jones (Hawaiian shirt) said he and friends drove from Crockett to protest the Inauguration. <br>He expected more people to be here, but was banned from Facebook so didn’t know if anything was planned. <a href="https://t.co/HuLbUbNnT3">pic.twitter.com/HuLbUbNnT3</a></p>— Kaley Johnson☀️ (@KaleyAJohnson) <a href="https://twitter.com/KaleyAJohnson/status/1351984476247756800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="F22IFp">Kentucky:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">There’s only been one protester outside Capitol in Frankfort today. His sign alludes to how well Hitler and Stalin got along. <a href="https://t.co/9HOCIkIx5H">pic.twitter.com/9HOCIkIx5H</a></p>— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) <a href="https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1351951974644649984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="SkwYcL">Utah:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">One man has an upside down U.S. flag, and on the other side a confederate flag <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/utpol?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#utpol</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/utleg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#utleg</a> <a href="https://t.co/VxKnJio6fI">pic.twitter.com/VxKnJio6fI</a></p>— Katie McKellar (@KatieMcKellar1) <a href="https://twitter.com/KatieMcKellar1/status/1351953417111891968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="M70hl6">Ohio:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Only a couple of protestors but lots of security at the Ohio Statehouse on Inauguration Day <a href="https://t.co/pD0L2IdalJ">pic.twitter.com/pD0L2IdalJ</a></p>— Karen Kasler (@karenkasler) <a href="https://twitter.com/karenkasler/status/1351930680897392647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="4X30oC">Oregon:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Protests never materialized earlier today in Salem, though there was certainly a large police and media presence. <a href="https://t.co/bALn4GcKZR">pic.twitter.com/bALn4GcKZR</a></p>— Hannah Ray Lambert (@TheHannahRay) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheHannahRay/status/1352019419380084742?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="7PK8GL">And Tennessee:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lone man in Trump hat outside the Tennessee Capitol does not want to talk because media “can’t be trusted” <a href="https://t.co/MbLFPfJQBs">pic.twitter.com/MbLFPfJQBs</a></p>— Stephen Elliott (@ElliottStephenB) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElliottStephenB/status/1351914397736820737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="HaG36g">Trump fans were also scarce in downtown Washington, DC, which is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/15/22233623/national-guard-capitol-secret-service-fbi-washington-dc">heavily militarized</a> following the insurrection. In fact, Tess Owen of Vice reported that Nickelback fans were better represented on streets around the US Capitol than Trump supporters.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I saw more Nickelback fans than MAGA hats today in DC <a href="https://t.co/MfXQ8fo4IC">pic.twitter.com/MfXQ8fo4IC</a></p>— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) <a href="https://twitter.com/misstessowen/status/1351975974116724738?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="LIPm8k">Of course, that Biden’s inauguration went off without a hitch in DC and at state capitols across the country doesn’t mean the threat posed by armed right-wing extremists has passed. But it does highlight how Trump’s months-long campaign to overthrow the election results descended from tragedy to farce in the weeks following the January 6 riot. It also hints at one way the bans from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-facebook-social-media-ban-election-misinformation-zignal">Trump and right-wing conspiracists and instigators</a> in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, which was largely organized online, are working. </p>
<p id="fok8H9">For his part, Trump not only didn’t attend Biden’s inauguration, but he managed to leave DC without ever properly acknowledging the legitimacy of his loss or officially conceding. He took off for Florida on Wednesday morning following a final speech as president at Joint Base Andrews in which he told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-leaves-white-house/2021/01/20/bb561da4-5a9e-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html">a modest crowd</a> of his supporters “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22240492/donald-trump-washington-joe-biden-inauguration-leaving-kamala-harris">we will be back in some form ... have a good life</a>.” </p>
<p id="dK7IOm">Coming as it did exactly two weeks after he delivered <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1347575342119219202">a fiery speech</a> that culminated in five people dying during a riot at the US Capitol in a failed bid to overthrow the election outcome, Trump’s resigned tone was notable. And, at least for one day, his followers took the hint.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22241150/pro-trump-inauguration-protests-low-energyAaron Rupar2021-01-20T17:20:00-05:002021-01-20T17:20:00-05:00American “heroes” get the spotlight in Biden’s virtual inaugural parade
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<figcaption>President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden walk the abbreviated inaugural parade route on January 20, 2021, in Washington, DC. | Mark Makela/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>In the virtual “Parade Across America,” Biden kept the focus on unity, everyday Americans, and Tony Goldwyn.</p> <p id="vDqGnp">How do you host an inaugural<strong> </strong>parade under the potential threat of violence and a skyrocketing death toll from a highly contagious virus? Virtually.</p>
<p id="JSiq6B">Even ahead of the January 6 storming of the Capitol, <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">now-President Joe Biden’s</a> inaugural committee planned to modify the day’s celebrations due to the danger posed by Covid-19, which has now killed more than 400,000 Americans. Together, the insurrection and the pandemic have made for a different inauguration, with the usual crowds absent.</p>
<p id="hXDA4e">Abandoning the traditional pomp of an in-person parade, Biden elected instead to host a virtual “Parade Across America.” Following in the tradition of the Democratic National Committee’s successful virtual convention last summer, the inaugural committee hosted an event featuring regular “heroes” — everyday Americans who have engaged in noteworthy behavior — and celebrities.</p>
<p id="ZA3foq">The event was kicked off by the University of Delaware and Howard University drumlines, the president’s and vice president’s alma maters, respectively. They escorted Biden and Harris from 15th Street to the White House and began a series of live performances announced by Charlie Brotman, who has announced almost every inauguration parade since President Dwight D. Eisenhower (former President Donald Trump was the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/08/politics/donald-trump-charles-brotman-inauguration-announcer/index.html">only president not to invite him</a>).</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Howard University Drumline to perform during the Inaugural 'Parade Across America' <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC7GMW?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ABC7GMW</a> <a href="https://t.co/PhaQbxrY7E">https://t.co/PhaQbxrY7E</a> <a href="https://t.co/c2OthZeZbf">pic.twitter.com/c2OthZeZbf</a></p>— Robert Burton (@ABC7Robert) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC7Robert/status/1351522419341733892?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 19, 2021</a>
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<p id="XW2pnC">The rest of the event was hosted by Tony Goldwyn, who played a fictional president on Shonda Rhimes’s show <em>Scandal, </em>and featured appearances by Jon Stewart, New Radicals, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, among other famous entertainers.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The virtual inauguration parade featured a segment with TikTok star <a href="https://twitter.com/doggface208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@doggface208</a>. <a href="https://t.co/11WTJgImEt">pic.twitter.com/11WTJgImEt</a></p>— The Recount (@therecount) <a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1352001547404775425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="jk2mY8">This new format made for a unique parade, one that showcased everyday Americans, whom the Biden team refers to as American “heroes.” They ranged from a teacher in Texas who went on a road trip to teach her virtual classroom history from important locations to a 12-year-old who played the trumpet for hospital workers during their breaks.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It's time to DANCE America! From sea to shining sea, Americans everywhere are celebrating the new <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/VP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VP</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InaugurationDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InaugurationDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/jNzNwdBQnW">pic.twitter.com/jNzNwdBQnW</a></p>— Biden Inaugural Committee (@BidenInaugural) <a href="https://twitter.com/BidenInaugural/status/1352010709370978309?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2021</a>
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<p id="dYwJG2">Biden’s team has hoped to emphasize unity as the theme of the inaugural events and ultimately was able to do so symbolically in his inaugural parade — highlighting Americans from all 56 US states and territories, a first for inaugural parades, according to the inaugural committee. The “Celebrating America” primetime special, which will air at 8:30 pm ET, is expected to follow this pattern, bringing together celebrities and noncelebrities to emphasize the theme of unity.</p>
<p id="RrIXNC">Follow along for more of Vox’s inauguration coverage <a href="https://www.vox.com/22229247/inauguration-day-2021-biden-sworn-in-president">here</a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/20/22240625/virtual-parade-inauguration-2021-biden-harris-goldwynJerusalem Demsas