joe biden Archives - Artist Joakim Lloyd Raboff

This is one of the last photos I took in Asia in early 2020. Shortly after, Charlotte and I flew to Copenhagen and then onwards to Malaga where we lived for about two months before heading back to Sweden as the pandemic swept across the world. I love the reflection and how it skewed the view behind me. It got me thinking about the transition of the past and the future yesterday below the Capitol in Washington D.C..

I watched the entire inaugural ceremony last night. I laughed and cried. But mostly I smiled. After his third try, Joe Biden finally hit a home run and is now the 46th president of the United States. Talk about being the comeback kid. In India and in Jamaica, people are feeling joyous for Kamala Harris. She is solid proof that the American Dream is still alive and kicking. That change and opportunities are endless.

A friend in L.A. told me a few hours ago how she felt relieved now that Joe and Kamala have replaced Donald and Mike. That the anxiety she’d been experiencing for months had subsided.

I find it’s kinda like when Luke Skywalker blew up the first Death Star and sent Darth Vader twirling out of control into space. I know, comparing Donald Trump to Darth Vader isn’t fair. Darth was pretty cool and had awesome mind-control powers. Donald was uncool and his ability to control feeble-minded folk only worked as long as he was in power.

The challenges that lie ahead are enormous. But with the new administration, the American Idea has been resuscitated. So now, the American experiment can continue, uninterrupted by the tyrannic despot that tried hard to sow fear and doubt and tore feverishly on the American quilt. I’m not sure the experiment will ever succeed. But like with my own life, one must never give up trying.

I wonder if Four Season Total Landscaping will donate a portion of their parking lot for Trump’s Presidential Library…

This is one of my favorites from the cow series. It symbolizes how I feel today. A day when I and the rest of the sane world get to stick our collective tongues out at the soon ex-prez.

I watched Trump’s farewell speech this morning and all I could feel was sadness. Trump came to power by promising so much, to be the antithesis of a politician, which reminded me of T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” terrific marketing slogan for many years. He portrayed himself as a rebel, someone that could get stuff done.

Tragically, instead, Donald J. Trump turned out to not only be unfit for the gig, but he also came to embrace and embody the worst qualities of a crooked politician, a used car salesman, and a snake oil peddler combined into a whirling cesspool of voluminous spewing bullshit. I couldn’t think of a single thing Trump said in his final speech that wasn’t an extreme exaggeration or a blatant lie. Not to mention the patriotic rhetoric crap that you know he doesn’t believe in but understands how solidly it hits a home run with his crowd of white supremacists, Qanon believers, and conspiracy theorists.

Sure, Joe Biden is an old guy that often looks really tired. But he’s decent, calm, and has in Kamala Harris made an excellent choice for VP. Not just because of gender or her diverse ethnicity, which really doesn’t interest me that much. What counts in my worldview is that she comes across as being very smart and having a good heart. Two qualities that supersede everything else she brings to the table. Let’s hope that J&K can get along with Congress so that they can start fixing stuff that Trump broke and pave the way for a brighter American future.

For many, Trump has represented the liberator of an often exaggerated political correctness that has swept across the world for several years. And it would have been ok if the healthy breath of truth had brought with it an era of more objective and honest politicians who said what they thought, regardless of whether their opinions were politically correct or not.

But it was not just Trump’s unfiltered rhetoric that characterized his four years in power. Instead, it was a never-ending diarrhea of extreme exaggerations and, above all, lies whose main purpose was to set his many followers on fire – especially rural Americans.

Trump could then use his populism and the radical movement he created as both a leveraging device and a whip, a threat to force congressional Republicans to both accept and on the surface embrace his often bizarre political outbursts and rash decisions.

From a historical perspective, Trump’s presidency will be associated with amateurism, cynicism, and fraud. And even though there are small, barely noteworthy gold nuggets from his time as the 45th President of the United States, even fool can get lucky, they are so few and so small that, in my opinion, they are negligible in relation to how much severe damage he has caused the American people and the world. Not least as a terrible representative of a leader for the world’s oldest democracy.

Some believe that Trump was subjected to a witch hunt from day one. But, I think instead, it was Trump who was the witch or the troll. A troll who today finally leaves the world stage so that serious, responsible people can take over the helm. It feels like it will be an early spring this year.

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