Editor’s note: Richard Bammer’s column runs every other Sunday in the Reporter.
I realize it’s better to be positive about the future of the United States after the Nov. 5 election, when former President Donald Trump won not only the Electoral College vote but also the popular vote.
There are days when those facts are hard to stomach, and my wife encourages me, alluding to John Bunyan’s 1687 novel “Pilgrim’s Progress” and its description of the swampy, mire-like Slough of Despond, not to fall into extreme depression or despondency about it, prompting my own past sins and guilt to return in nagging flashbacks from time to time.
In other words, what she intends to say in real English is, “Get over it, pal. The 2024 election is what it is. Deal with it.”
I admit I’m anxious about Trump 2.0 because, while he asserted knowing nothing about Project 2025 while campaigning, he recently picked a co-author, Russell Vought, to lead the Office of Management and Budget in his second term.
What are we in for? According to the project’s blueprint, it’s higher taxes on lower earners and benefits for higher earners, with the conversion of seven tax brackets into two; the elimination of Head Start, which provides early childhood education, health and nutrition, among other things, to poor children and families (Mr. Trump, it’s not a freebie giveaway program, but — just a reminder — tax breaks for yacht owners are).
The project also proposes the phasing-out of Title 1, the federal funding for low-income public schools, with thousands of teachers at risk of losing their jobs and affecting nearly 3 million children; lifetime caps on Medicaid, the federal-state health care insurance program that helps pay for health care for low-income people of any age (note: almost 95 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid in 2021).
There are other targets in Project 2025, of course, including banning the abortion pill; ending student loan forgiveness; and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (can you say, “Let’s ditch most progress on lowering carbon emissions”?).
Not least among the goals outlined in the project is the substantial boost of presidential power by a proposed increase in the number political appointees in federal agencies. Under Trump 2.0, we may see the removal of civil service protections, making employees easier to fire, if he (once again) reclassifies an estimated 50,000 civil servants as political appointees.
While I dread what may come, I was comforted recently by a detailed newspaper report about the 161st anniversary and recitation of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19 at the Gettysburg National Military Park.
On a hill outside the small Pennsylvania town, featured speaker and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, currently director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in Manhattan, commemorated the 16th president’s words.
Over time, of course, Lincoln’s 272 words — which some of us memorized and certainly can recite phrases — have become enshrined as a sort of civic prayer for unity and direction for a nation in 1863 starkly and tragically divided by civil war.
The ceremony, held not not far from row after countless row of grave markers for some 50,000 casualties of the horrific and war-changing battle, came just two weeks to the day after a contentious presidential election of a once and future president.
Lincoln’s words embody what it means to be presidential.
The address famously begins with “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
It ends with this equally famous sentence: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Whether or not Trump 2.0 will further define what it means to be presidential by using presidential and noteworthy prose to help heal a deeply divided nation in his second inaugural address on Jan. 20 is a widely open question. After all, “Honest Abe,” who referred to the “better angels of our nature” in his first inaugural address, was never convicted on 34 felony counts in a state court, faced charges in federal court, or was twice impeached.
Before Holzer recited the address, an annual ceremony within another annual ceremony occurred: a citizenship ceremony. Sixteen people from eight countries — Bhutan, Britain, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Mexico and South Africa — promised to protect the Constitution and pledged allegiance to the United States of America.
In my own experience of covering a citizenship ceremony some years ago at the Fairfield branch of Solano County Library, something quite remarkable happened. I interviewed three newly minted U.S. citizens separately and each, while speaking with me, said, at one point, “This is the best day of my life.”
For them, it seemed to me, the oath of allegiance was a prayer for the future and embodies this annual season of light we’re passing through this week.
Richard Bammer is a Reporter staff writer.
This post was originally published on here
