A Note on Watching the Inauguration

I know some would prefer a path of avoidance, given the portent of today’s proceedings. Darkness does attend this decline of our people and our culture, and the rise of a felon and predator and terrorist to the most elevated dais of our nation. We have learned what our neighbors will trade. We have learned what they will minimize and defend. It seems that we now share too little, in terms of common values with them.

But I believe we should watch these proceedings in full, being reminded of Martha Gellhorn’s words in A Stricken Field. It was a novel about a growing sense of helplessness against the forces of authoritarianism. It opens with an epigraph, which reads:

There were young knights among them who had never been present at a stricken field. Some could not look up on it, and some could not speak. They held themselves apart from the others who were cutting down the prisoners at my Lord’s orders, for the prisoners were a body too numerous to be guarded by those of us who were left. Then Jean de Rye, an aged Knight of Burgundy, who had been sore-wounded in the fight, rode up to the group of young knights and said; “Are ye maidens with your downcast eyes? Look well upon it. See all of it. Close your eyes to nothing. For the battle is fought to be won, and it is this that happens if you lose.

I for one will watch the proceedings, in full. Like the events of September the 11th, I intend to remember January the 6th. And I intend to remember this day, and those who have caused it.