#CeLTiXxX Posted February 7, 2022 Posted February 7, 2022 One of the central themes of Joe Biden's election campaign was restoring unity to a divided nation. Twelve months after taking office, things don't seem to be getting any better. Long before the sun rose over the dome of the US Capitol on the day he was sworn in as president, technicians on the inaugural platform tested the teleprompter from which he would later read America's most famous sermon: "Eighty-seven years ago our fathers created on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are now engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure." When I first saw the lines from the Gettysburg Address on those screens in front of the presidential podium, I thought it must be some kind of bad joke. However, the words of Abraham Lincoln could hardly be described as out of place. Washington, after all, looked like a military camp that morning. Security forces had slept overnight in the halls of Congress to protect it from seditionists, just as their ancestors had done in Lincoln's day. The scaffolding of the inaugural platform had been used only two weeks before as the scene of the January 6 insurrection. The Confederate flag was even raised high in the halls of American power, as some of its citizens once again fought each other. This is why the question Lincoln posed seemed especially pertinent as the new incumbent prepared to take power: can this country last much longer? Rather than talk that day of national renewal, a staple of presidential inaugurations, Biden focused on reunification.
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