Timing

Alas, the high tension level in Washington, D.C. today left me thinking my desire to post a Joe Biden joke on my Facebook feed would have been poorly received. I should have used it back closer to election day, but who would have guessed something like this mess?

Anyway, my joke was that I was looking forward to Inauguration Day because I very much wanted to see whose Inauguration speech President Biden would deliver. Oh well. And as far as I've been able to see, the new president decided not to "channel" Neil Kinnock in this one. He did talk a lot about unity, and I appreciated that although I think a number of his supporters smiled, clapped and made approving faces while still thinking that anyone to their right dragged knuckles on the ground when they walked.

But to be honest, I don't know if I really want unity. I know I don't want it if it means I have to think like he does, because he's wrong about a lot of things. And according to Robert Gates, who was Defense Secretary while President Biden was Vice-President Biden, those things include "nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." That's not good.

I also don't necessarily want unity if it means President Biden and everyone thinks like I do. I can be wrong (trust me -- I've seen me do it) and it's only when someone thinks differently than I do when I'm wrong that we learn what's right.

What I think I would like are good manners. That may sound very very Church-Ladyish but I sort of mean it. What if I thought differently than someone else -- and in fact, thought they were flat-out doorpost dumb? But I didn't tell them I thought they were dumb, because doing so would be...bad manners. What if I thought that a particular public official, either current or very recently former, had next to no character and didn't deserve the high office he or she held but I didn't verbally brand that idea into every conversation I had with everyone every day because doing so would be...bad manners? Say someone told me they'd heard the best poem they'd ever heard today but they'd be hard-pressed to tell me the second-best poem they'd ever heard, and I thought that meant they were responding more to the occasion than whatever actual poetry might have been said. But I didn't tell them because that would be...bad manners.

You get the idea. No demands for conformity masquerading as unity cosplay. But also no shouting. Just good manners. I'm probably being hopelessly bourgeois, but I really think there's a possibility here. Maybe I'll try to act on it.