“That democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived.”

The COVID Diaries – 271 20th January

Today it seems appropriate to simply record some of the highlights from Joe Biden’s inspirational inaugural speech as President of the United States:

“Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now. A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of world war II. Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed. A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.

“To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.

“Let us add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our nation. If we do this, then when our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us they gave their best. They did their duty. They healed a broken land.

“May this be the story that guides us. The story that inspires us. The story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history. We met the moment. That democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived.

“That our America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another and generations to follow.”