We seem to have confused the peaceful transfer of power between political parties--they were already doing it in England before we even were a country--with a) something fundamentally American and b) something necessary to ceremonialize on TV.

There's no real need to have the outgoing president participate in the inauguration of the new one, or to have a big party, etc. That can be nice, maybe, but in certain hard times it might be more appropriate to just get on with the governing.

What's become the inauguration norm isn't the end of the world either, it's OK, whatever. But we're confusing the ceremony and the attendant self-congratulatory narrative with the actual thing, which is just political parties avoiding outright warfare and government continuing.

This year, the GOP is pushing the warfare envelope harder than it's been pushed since 1876. That's nauseating. The test of the system, though, wouldn't be whether we can still have a big inauguration ceremony.

I'm reminded by @GrahamClarkMA of the Brooks Brothers riot of 2000. True--unlike 1876 and 2020, the national capital wasn't threatened, but it was a GOP operation to use force to stop a vote count in a presidential election.

I should note in closing that by the 19C Britain also had a long tradition of violent election rioting and intimidation--not presidential, of course. 1865 was wild. The Riot Act was literally read.