{"id":89102,"date":"2025-01-21T06:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89102"},"modified":"2025-01-22T14:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T20:27:16","slug":"the-golden-age-begins-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89102","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Age Begins Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;ve never made bones about the fact I&#8217;ve been a Trump skeptic.&nbsp; Eight years ago I voted for Scott Walker, and thought that Trump&#8217;s term would be a disaster, hopefully mitigated by a good SCOTUS pick.&nbsp;&nbsp; I was wrong &#8211; mostlly, anyway.&nbsp; His behavior in 2020 cost the GOP the Senate, and he had an uncanny habit of endorsing bad candidates.&nbsp; But I held my nose and voted for him.<\/p>\n<p>There was no holding my nose this time &#8211; although I make no bones about the fact that I&#8217;d really like to see more of the Focused Donald than the Twitter Donald.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was a good start.<\/p>\n<p>Itwas the first inauguration I watched live since Jimmy Carter.&nbsp; But I picked a good one.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s speech was the best I&#8217;ve seen him give.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Full Speech of Donald Trump&#039;s inaugural address\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zaZnTMZ07k4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It clocked in at 29 minutes &#8211; and didn&#8217;t include (many of) the rhetorical tangents that make so many of this speeches feel like rhetorical slalom runs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was by turns pugnacious and intensely optimistic.&nbsp;&nbsp; I was glad I had a chance to see it.&nbsp; I think it recapped the tone of his campaign &#8211; especially since the first assassination attempt &#8211; and laid out the agenda far more clearly than he ever did in his first time.&nbsp; It was&#8230;bracing.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Side issue &#8211; my father, a speech teacher, used to say that nobody in the modern world embodied classical oratory like Southern Baptist ministers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rev. Lorenzo Sprewell certainly made the case:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rev. Lorenzo Sewell Brings Down The House Issuing Passionate Prayer At Trump&#039;s Inauguration\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vhJQqf0LkcI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a genuine wonder and joy to behold.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And as someone who grew up seeing &#8220;dead air&#8221; as the enemy, and believes taped backing tracks are a plague on society, Carrie Underwood did one of the most amazing things a performer can do &#8211; took a compete technical clusterf**k and. turned it into a triumph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carrie Underwood performs during 2025 inauguration of Trump\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n96RBAMipIY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Let the metaphors fly.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never made bones about the fact I&#8217;ve been a Trump skeptic.&nbsp; Eight years ago I voted for Scott Walker, and thought that Trump&#8217;s term would be a disaster, hopefully mitigated by a good SCOTUS pick.&nbsp;&nbsp; I was wrong &#8211; mostlly, anyway.&nbsp; His behavior in 2020 cost the GOP the Senate, and he had an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-24","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89102"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89115,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89102\/revisions\/89115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}