Jeff Shesol, New York Times; A Dark Rhetorical Cloud Over Washington
"One of the most celebrated moments of the First World War took place on Christmas morning 1914, along the Western Front. Thousands of British and German troops, without prompting, climbed out of the trenches and met in no-man’s land. Gathered together on frozen ground, the men sang carols well into the night; they traded chocolate and cigarettes and kicked soccer balls. “It was a short peace,” a Scottish infantryman recalled, “in a terrible war.”
Inauguration Day, historically, has been a little like that: a pause, a brief truce, “an interlude of national reunion,” as the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. put it. After a divisive election, the inaugural ceremony — and its centerpiece, the presidential address — is meant to reaffirm our common identity as Americans, before we resume fighting about what exactly that means.
Donald J. Trump added his voice to history’s chorus today, and it was shrill and discordant. If any new president had a need to repair the breach, it was Mr. Trump — who was roundly, even vehemently, rejected by nearly 66 million voters, about three million more than the number that supported him. “We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny,” Mr. Trump proclaimed, one of a number of anodyne, unobjectionable phrases urging unity and “solidarity.” Yet he refused — pointedly — even to acknowledge his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton."
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