A photograph of Sanders sitting alone in the background, meanwhile, equally instantly became a meme, with millions around the world placing it at the epicentre of a fictive hole in the heart of their humanity. Gorman’s poem almost instantly became the talismanic phrasing of a desperate hope. While Gorman looked alive, hopeful and excited, that old man, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, looked as if he was about to take a quick nap – or else, experiencing a moment of Nirvana, of bliss, of Vahdat al-Wujud (unity of being). Somewhere inconspicuous behind her on the same stage sat a solitary old man, masked and bespectacled, wearing an old beige parka and rough-looking mittens. Who would have thought?Īmanda Gorman recited a poem of sublime hope and judicious inspiration, transfixing an entire nation unto her every word. Two events marked and distinguished this historic ceremony that officially brought an end to Donald Trump’s reign of lies, cruelties and corruption: a young Black woman reciting a powerful poem, and an old man sitting with his arms and legs crossed in a folding chair away from everyone. It was an opportunity for millions of Americans experiencing an identity crisis to briefly have some semblance of normalcy. In this context, Biden’s inauguration on January 20 was a sigh of relief, a spectacle of reassurance, a deliverance. Meanwhile, more than 440,000 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19 and many more are struggling to feed their families. Trump forever diminished the office of the presidency, dismantled the naïve presumption that the US is immune to fascism, and unleashed so much fear and distrust into the US Congress that American legislators are now scared of their own colleagues and police officers tasked with protecting them. Was it really the US – and not Chile, Guatemala or Iran – that faced a violent coup attempt, supported by the US president himself, amid a deadly pandemic and a deepening economic crisis? But after watching a white supremacist mob ransack their Capitol, they found themselves unable to ignore America’s crisis of identity. Until January 6, Americans were able to dismiss the world’s opinion of them and their country by claiming that it is rooted in jealousy and thus irrelevant. Now, Americans in general have two clashing sets of identities: their self-perception as the privileged residents of a “shining city on a hill”, as Ronald Reagan repeatedly told them, and the outside world’s perception of them as the subjects of a dysfunctional, crumbling empire that poses an existential threat to humanity at large. In his iconic The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the towering American thinker WEB Du Bois (1868-1963) coined the term “double consciousness” to refer to the internal clash between the two sets of identities in a Black person, or any other human being, subjected to the damning gaze of a racist, colonising power that comes into conflict with his or her own self-perception.ĭu Bois’s conception of “double consciousness” has assumed a new meaning in America these days. Is there any hope, or is it all despair? ‘Double Consciousness’ We better shut up.īetween the sensible warnings of Rebecca Gordon and the lulling assurances of Ben Mathis-Lilley, a nation and the world around it are wondering whether they will be able to survive the deadly combination of a pandemic, literally earth-shattering environmental calamity, insane economic inequality, and maddening militarism. Anyone who dares to criticise Biden, or express a negative opinion on his agenda, he mused, is either a reactionary conservative, or a supercilious lefty. “Almost no one’s opinion matters any more and it’s great,” declared Ban Mathis-Lilley in a recent jubilant piece for Slate. Meanwhile, there are also those who think with the Biden presidency the US has finally entered “the promised land” and criticism of its political, economic and military machinations is no longer necessary. It may well remain the most powerful military in the world for a while longer, but signs indicate that soon there will not be much of a world for it to rule over and terrorise, no matter who is in the White House. Moreover, the US is trying to sustain its imperial dominance amid a growing global environmental catastrophe. The factors that fractured the Roman Empire and many others since – gross economic inequality overspending on military expansion political corruption deep cultural and political fissures – are indeed distinctly present in the United States today, even after Biden’s inauguration. “With unprecedented economic inequality and massive overspending on military expansion, America now looks a lot like 476 CE Rome.”

“The US empire is crumbling before our eyes,” declared Rebecca Gordon in a short but poignant essay published by The Nation just a day after President Joe Biden took office.

End him rightly meme