Inauguration Day Arrives As Trump and MLK Share Days of Remembrance and Potential Disaster!

By Donald A. Collins | 21 January 2025
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

The enthusiasm shown by Trump’s GOP as it takes over our Federal government with its trifecta win (albeit its mandate is not as great as Trump claims) is frightening to at least half of American voters. But Trump’s intended actions as supported by his cast of largely unqualified nominees will doubtless inflict serious damage to our Democratic rules of law and Constitutional principles.

And his ideologically packed Supreme Court’s immunity decision gives him virtually unlimited power to act even inappropriately!

I confess I did not watch the inauguration as Trump and his scurvy bunch amassed on the podium and throughout DC. Held indoors even as the DC temperature at about 30 would have allowed an outdoor ceremony meant he didn’t have to lie about the crowd size.

Guess it takes a convicted felon to give massive pardons to many already convicted felons!

In reading the opinion piece by Eugene Robinson on inauguration day in the Washington Post entitled “Inauguration Day: The pinnacle of a Second Gilded Age” I was pleased to see its focus was on comparing a past Gilded Age, which he noted closed around 1900 with the arrival of Theodore Roosevelt, a trustbuster who caused the unbalanced gap between Rich and poor to be at least protected by our trust laws. Robinson’s subtitle was “With a second Trump term comes a greater concentration of wealth and power.”

Read Robinson’s excellent piece here in full.

Where now in America on inauguration day for Mr. Trump was a leader such as Theodore Roosevelt who can succeed in getting the Democrat Party back to the Presidency. Roosevelt protected our democracy in 1900 after President McKinley, a doxy to his rich supporters was assassinated.

Certainly, strong Democrats will immediately surface who in future can lead a resurrection of rightness from this equally daunting 2nd Gilded Age wealth gap. Robinson notes that in America one percent of the wealthy own over 30% of the nation’s entire wealth is not clear.

Of course as David Brooks, a top NY Times columnist noted on Friday January 17th on WETA’s evening news program there are an equal number of billionaire Democrats. Perhaps people such as Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates can lead in restoring more balance to the gap but it remains a difficult issue to resolve.

Now we will see what happens. I predict that many of the most outlandish actions by Trump will not occur, but many things that would be highly destructive to our country will occur!

For example, undermining or dismissing many of our qualified veteran civil servants, while attempting to remove the benefits of many federal government employees will not improve the function of our government.

Doubtless there are many cases where expenses could be eliminated in government at every level on federal to state.

However, it is obvious that the GOP’s idea of savings will be imposed upon the less wealthy while at the same time there will be efforts to reduce the taxes of billionaires and our largest corporations! Of course, major tax cuts for the rich were exemplified by Trump’s first term’s reduction of corporate taxes from 37 to 21 percent. And he added $7 trillion to our burgeoning national debt which his GOP wants to reduce on the backs of the poor.

As this trend becomes obvious, it will be evident that the 2026 mid-term elections in 2026 can produce substantial roadblocks in whatever Trump does initially.

Thus while trump’s inauguration day is one of deep depression for anyone who cares about democracy, we have been in this difficult situation before not only in the first Gilded Age, but also at the time of the Civil War when a new beginning, was undertaken by the government at that time which kept our democracy intact or future generations.

The progress made over the years in many areas is evidenced by the hard-won recognition of civil rights by Martin Luther King and many others. Also, we see growing equity for women setback by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that killed Roe. But women’s major presence in all media marks the promise that many of the racist, greedy authoritarian efforts on the part of Trump and his allies will be overcome by the new generation that recognizes many of his instincts will carry us backwards, not forwards in a world that is increasingly complex and dangerous.

Biden on January 17th too late to do anything to lift legal questions claimed the long pending Equal Rights Amendment was the 28th Amendment to our Constitution but he had no power to order the US Archivist to issue confirmation of its approval; so, it is not. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who worked tirelessly to get it done, now suggests that individual states will have to initiate lawsuits which can work their way to the Supreme Court where it’s approval is not assured.

Read here the complex story.

And also read here the January 17th article in which Senator Kirsten Gillibrand notes the legal route for confirmation will begin with state located lawsuits. Thus, the effect of the 28th Amendment upsetting the Dobbs decision on abortion rights will not be soon.

Manifest Destiny, featured in Trump’s January 20th Inaugural Address, which was a hallmark of that first Gilded Age is now in process of being repeated as Trump seeks to expand our impact on Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and an executive order to rename the Peninsula.

Read here the definition of US Manifest Destiny policies in the idle of the 19th Century: Manifest Destiny: What It Meant for American Expansion.

Trump’s 2nd term seems poised to try to impose less help for our poorer citizens instead of raising us all to use our enormous strength to solve the disruptions created with environmental crises, which he calls a hoax, but was clearly triggered by the rising human populations whose effects for disastrous human existence have become certain and insufficiently addressed by world leadership.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?” and “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”.

Watch President Donald Trump’s full 2025 inauguration speech

WATCH: Biden honors Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on his final full day as president

The Rise of the Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else | ENDEVR Documentary

Billionaires rule? Trump stacks cabinet with super rich • FRANCE 24 English

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