Here we goooo.

The inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is underway.

I'm going to just follow long and comment under this thread rather than clog your timelines. Feel free to mute this post if not interested.

HERE WE GO!

1/

As setup, I may or may not have opened a bottle of champagne after Fuckopotamus got shunted into a helicopter like a bag of wet laundry.

Okay, I did open the champagne and made myself a mimosa the size of a small child.

I regret nothing.

2/

I should also mention that I am running on about 30 hours without sleep. Staying up all night seemed like a good idea at the time.

Plus, I am shining like a new dime and it's a big day and I'm seriously into this.

So, booze and sleeplessness... I will apologize for nothing.

3/

Were it not for Mike Pence, the festivities could just as easily be taking place in a country that was empaneling its very first democratic government.

Trump has not even landed at his tacky cheese palace in Florida and it is as if he has already been bled from the system.

4/

Before you boil crawfish, you immerse them in a salt bath. The solution prompts the crawfish to purge all their crawfish poop. I dont advise doing that in a stall shower in a small studio apartment. But I digress.

The point is, Trump is crawfish shit. And he has been purged.

Descending to the stage, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Harris looks positively radiant. Illuminated by the moment.

For four years, we have been starved for the honesty of emotion. We have gone without authenticity. We have seen no joy.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff exude the warmth of people healthy in their relationships with each other and with the world.

And it could not possibly be a more striking contrast to the flat, emotionless toxicity of those they are replacing.

Now arriving on the stage, President-elect Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

We are moments away from inaugurating as America's First Family, a man of character and decency and his longtime partner and equal, herself very much a person of substance.

Let me reiterate the above re: a giant mimosa because I was already maxed out emotionally before the inauguration began and I'm probably going to wax all philosophic and get all sentimental and shit. You've now been doubly warned.

We have just gone so long without.

For me personally, the rise of Trump's candidacy was positively PTSD-inducing.

The narcissism, the predictable sociopathy, the formulaic patterns of deceit and abuse, were all as familiar as an old photo album of people I once knew.

But then I sublimated all of that.

And I pivoted to merely trying to explain it so others might feel less unsettled by a toxic volatility that on its face seems chaotic but is actually hardwired and patterned.

But tuning into the nuance of Trump's narcissism has been like inhabiting it in a way.

It requires running that operating system and bathing in its dysfunction.

I hadn't appreciated how ready I was to no longer do that until the past day.

It is a liberation; a disburdening. Today is an emancipation from appointments in a sewer. My lord, this has been a lot.

Lady Gaga steps to the podium to deliver the Star Spangled Banner and I'm not gonna lie, she is flat making me cry.

I am grizzled. Let it be known, I am grizzled. I own an actual machete.

But Gaga just made a grown man cry.

That was beautiful.

Compared to Trump's inauguration in 2016, today is a chiffon. It is light, and joyful. A buoyant celebration.

Trump's was a cement truck. Malevolent and joyless. It had no light and portended the darkness to follow.

Today is so very the opposite.

Justice Sotomayor steps up to administer the oath of office to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Harris, with hand raised, recites the oath and upon completion, breaks into a beaming smile.

Ladies and gentleman, Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States.

Inexplicably, Jennifer Lopez now takes to the podium to sing despite not in any way being good at singing.

No knock on J-Lo but she is not a singer. And this is not good.

This is the Gigli of inauguration performances.

I'm going to re-mosa my drink.

Chief Justice John Roberts steps to the fore to administer the oath of office to President-elect Joe Biden.

Joe steps forward, places his hand on a family bible, and recites the oath

"...so help me god."

"Congratulations, Mr. President."

Joseph R. Biden is the President of the United States.

Joe Biden takes to the podium to deliver his inaugural address.

Throughout history, this is a speech that leaves first an impression and is then fully distilled and digested.

It is among the most important orations in world civilization.

That is not hyperbole.

There is no other single oration anywhere in the world which better telegraphs what the world will see of us... and that posture and policy affects humanity worldwide.

It has always been a moment to soar, aspire, illuminate.

It has always been a lamp.

To we Americans, inaugurations feel so very much our own. A national ceremony relevant to only us.

But all across the world at this very moment, the eyes of humanity are upon us.

The community of humankind is global.

The world is watching.

Among the worst of the vulgarities of Trump's 2016 inaugural address was it dark, threatening turn toward fear and anger.

Gone was the soaring rhetoric of a nation which even in its struggles, hardships and failures never surrenders to an embittered hopelessness.

It was in itself, the first of Trump's many treasons.

It was an abrogation of our duty as a nation privileged by wealth, resources and opportunity to lead in principle even as we struggle in deed.

It was a dark embrace.

And today, the sun has returned.

President Biden's remarks have been measured and conciliatory.

It is about mending the damage to a national tapestry that has not been so badly rended since the Civil War.

It is animated but calm; assertive but not aggressive.

It is a call to return to decency.

Orations like these are vessels which float upon a strategic idea. There is an underlying strategy which answers a question:

What is it that must be accomplished?

The audience is boarding the vessel. Where must they be taken?

The answer informs the words, tone and delivery.

Today, that central strategic idea - the single organizing principle - was that we must first reduce the toxicity and divisiveness of our politics.

This was a bookend. It was a purposeful opposite.

Trump's inaugural speech introduced the virus. Biden's called for a vaccine.

And now, 22-year old Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate is reciting a poem.

I am going to need to watch it again while also reading the words. If someone has the video and/or text, please hit me with a link.

That was a poem history will long remember.

What is most striking today is just how quickly the waters have forgotten the disruption of the stone.

It is as if Donald Trump simply no longer exists.

He is not an afterthought. He is not a figure moved from present to past.

It is literally as if he simply no longer exists.

You'll be dismayed to learn that I have nearly completed consumption of my refilled mimosa.

This leaves me sadly mimosa-less for the remainder of today's inaugural program.

We appear to be wrapping up here, so that can be remedied before this evening's concerts, I suppose.

And on that note, the ceremony has concluded.

President Biden and Vice President Harris are greeting attendees as they work their way toward the exit.

America has a new President and Vice President.

The Trump Era, has been buried without eulogy. It deserved no better.

For 1,461 days, the United States was held at gunpoint by a president beneath the dignity of the office.

It was a national hostage-taking.

Today, the hostages have been freed to spill out into the light.

It's a new dawn.
It's a new day.
And I'm feeling good.