Notes on the Biden Inaugural

Quotes from the Inaugural transcript at Politico, followed by my remarks.

President Biden:

I understand that many Americans view the future with some fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs, about taking care of their families, about what comes next. I get it.

But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.

I understand that Biden's main theme was unity, and I certainly acknowledge that unity is a high priority. I'm not sure, from reading Biden's speech, if the people he wants to bring into the fold will be enticed by what he's offering. I don't think I'd be comfortable with it, if I was one of them.

But in the words quoted above, Biden says people are worried "about their jobs, about taking care of their families, about what comes next." These are economic concerns. You're not going to solve our economic problems be being unified. You need a plan. More than that: You need some version of the right plan. You can only solve our economic problems if you understand what's causing them and if you shut down the problem at the source. 

For the record: the federal debt isn't the problem. It's a consequence of the problem. It will be easy to keep the federal debt in check if we solve the real problem, which is the rest of the debt -- debt other than federal. It's the private sector that needs to grow, so it's private sector debt that has to be reduced, by hook or by crook. 

Most especially by policy. We just need a little creativity. Look at it this way: They make laws that encourage borrowing, but they don't make laws that encourage repayment of debt. So debt accumulates. That's the problem that must be fixed.

What, you thought the problem that created the Financial Crisis was solved?

 

Again, Biden:

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.

Not sure how long a period of time Biden has in mind when he says "the one we're in now." Short, probably. Since 6 January? The last four years, perhaps? Surely not decades.

We'd be lucky if it's only decades. Ian Hall writes of Arnold J. Toynbee:

The modern West, he believed, was past its genesis and growth phases, and was now in breakdown—indeed, it was now in a ‘Time of Troubles’ from which only a resurgence of ‘creativity’ could liberate it.

Not sure about this; I'm no expert on Toynbee. But it occurs to me to wonder if perhaps the "Time of Troubles" of our civilization is the whole of the "capitalism" phase of the cycle of civilization. The timing is right: 

Toynbee argues that our own time of troubles began during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

Ian Hall writes: "the most obvious symptom" of a Time of Troubles is "persistent, unlimited war"; the kind of war that "threatened the existence of the civilization." World wars; nuclear weapons; chemical weapons; biological warfare. 

Ian Hall on the Time of Troubles:

The causes of this development, Toynbee argued, were many and varied. First, there was a palpable loss of creativity, of the ability to respond to new challenges. 

Loss of "the ability to respond to new challenges": Our inability to solve perennial and long-term problems such as economic depression and the decline of growth.

Second, he observed that each civilization had seen a [schism] between the ‘dominant minority’ and the ‘internal proletariat’. 

Came to a head on the sixth of January, didn't it. Turns out Trump's people are the internal proletariat.

Third, he noted the presence in each case of an ‘external proletariat’ of barbarians or foreigners from a different civilization, which threatened the civilization from beyond its walls. 

Osama bin Laden and Iran and all that, and the Islamic civilization.

Last, Toynbee detected a ‘Schism in the Soul’ of each civilization which led to such social evils as a longing for a lost past or an unattainable future, a loss of individual or collective self-control, a rise in ‘truancy and martyrdom’, a tendency to fatalism, and an upsurge in cultural, sartorial, linguistic and sexual promiscuity.

A longing for a lost past? Perhaps like "Make America Great Again"? As for the rest, you probably know better than I.