From Insurrection to Inauguration
On January 6, those of us in New Zealand watched with horror as the US capital was attacked by an angry, Trump infused mob. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised. I’m more surprised that it took this long for things to turn as hostile and violent as they did. I am especially aware of how I am living in an alternate reality as an American living in more-or-less covid free New Zealand where the prime minister was just overwhelmingly re-elected.
When I had my complete freak out after the 2016 election, a MAGA siege of the capital was something I predicted and feared, though it seemed like a far-off dystopian vision at the time. The addition of a global pandemic was a detail I hadn’t thought about, but it made the scenes of hands grabbing the capital police officer’s mask as he was crushed in a doorway all the more painful to watch - and it was nightmarish to see in the first place.
I’m disgusted with the way these people (domestic terrorists, right wing nut jobs, cult members, rioters, whatever you want to call them) are acting. I’m pleasantly surprised in the reactions from politicians and social media companies. It seems like the capitol riots were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and woke people up to the fact that all of this rhetoric isn’t good for the country.
Once the social media platforms kicked Trump off and Parler lost its ability to offer a virtual meeting spot for insurrection planning, life in New Zealand became shockingly calm. There wasn’t a hot mess Twitter storm to wake up to every morning. The news cycle wasn’t full of bizarre and erratic behavior from the POTUS. Things felt almost normal.
As inauguration day came closer, I contacted friends and family to see if things really were as calm as they appeared to be on the news. It was hard to believe that after years of waking up to shocking American news nearly every day, there was, well, nothing. There weren’t any violent protests popping up. There were a handful of people arrested in D.C., but the state capitols weren’t overrun with local militias. It felt like the world was holding its collective breath, waiting to see if Joe Biden would get sworn in peacefully. On the 19th (20th here) when everything seemed like the inauguration would go off without interference, I finally started to believe that this might actually happen! And when Biden held a vigil for those 400,000 Americans who lost their lives to coronavirus, it was the most presidential thing I’ve seen in the past four years. That evening we even went out for a celebratory dinner, hoping we weren’t jinxing the whole thing.
On Thursday morning New Zealand time, we woke up early to watch the livestream of the inauguration. It was a different event, for sure, with flags instead of people, but it was an emotional way to start the day. Biden’s address sounded presidential, and Amanda Gorman’s poem had us all bawling. I didn’t realize how much being an American was making me inwardly cringe until the event was over. Thursday morning was the first time in a long time when I felt okay wearing my Texas hat out for my daily dog walk, and by Thursday afternoon I found myself completely exhausted and drained. Letting go of all of that stress made me want to climb in bed for a week.
The US has a long way to go to “right the ship” so to speak, and I don’t think that Biden is going to do all of the things that need to be done. But his steps - both small and large - in the right direction are better than continuing to move backwards like the US has been under the last administration. We’re not planning on moving back any time soon because of the election, but we’re hopeful that the US will get its act together and we’ll be able to visit safely soon.
Since I’m one of the Kiwi press’s token Americans to call when anything happens stateside, I spoke with the fine folks at RNZ after the January 6 riots. The article can be found here.
We were also featured on TVNZ’s the Breakfast show on Thursday morning. The clip is on Facebook and can be found here.
