January 19, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

This is about family, not politics. My old perch as a 26-year newspaper editorialist back in the day when my publishers left the opinion section free to offer varied views, which so help me God I tried to do in the spirit of my predecessors at the now-former Rockland Journal-News in Nyack, N.Y., included much political viewpoint in editorials, some educated and, I regret, some not. These days, retired, the job done even with mistakes, the only focus is family. The “Family of Man,” they used to say. Now the “Family of Humankind.”

Tomorrow, January 20, 2025, there will be another U.S. presidential swearing-in, a tradition set by the founders after we freed ourselves from the British, a necessary move economically, socially and for the chance at a democratic republic, not as a colony. It was and is a tentative living experiment.

Tomorrow almost did not happen. If Vice President Mike Pence had ignored his constitutional duty to certify Joe Biden as president in 2020, as urged by the incumbent Donald Trump, there arguably could have been a governmental breakdown in our nation, with the presidential election process thrown aside for at least a time.

However, Pence did his duty. There was another election, and now we have a duly elected Trump set to swear allegiance in the Capitol Rotunda, where Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower and 32 others have lain in state, where, on January 6, 2021, a mob sullied the floor as they sought insurrection in the belief that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump. They attacked our reason for being, urged on by Trump at the very least to protest. Death, injury, destruction of hallowed space followed. Irony it is that the now-repolished Rotunda will serve to swear-in a man as president.

And on the very day that the country honors the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the assassinated champion for human rights. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” the visionary said in his last speech, referring to the “mountaintop” climb the nation was taking in pursuing equal rights for women, minorities, the many forgotten. The Family of Humankind. The living democratic experiment moving ahead.

So this essay, of course of no importance in the scheme of things, is not political; it is about family. As King was not complacent, neither should any of us in the family be. Voters in November made their choice based largely on economic and social issues, though arguably without full context, and we have a new president. Since we are family, we must hold Trump and his people to the task. He has his chance, and the family is watching. So is the collective conscience of the leaders who once lay in repose in the very Rotunda where Trump will swear to the family that he will “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The trampling in the Rotunda will echo in that moment.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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