In the end the only thing left was the trash blowing around in the dust of the National Mall, the final scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Empty bottles, shredded newspaper, chairs, mittens, food scraps, things discarded along the way by the crowd. It was as if something had exploded, a giant trash compactor burst, its contents carried aloft in the frigid, winter air. To each side of the dusty strip, the stoic sentries of the old guard stood watch, unmoved, their classical colonnades and wide marble steps almost indifferent to the wasteland left behind by the departed people.
Come tomorrow, the trash will be gone and the political machine, no doubt, will go on as it has always done, unflinching, unrepentant, and from behind the doors of those stone buildings.
But out on the mall, in the steerage of our nation, the explosion was real. Our culture rumbled forward a bit, like a fault running through the earth, the slow motion of the bigger swell inched to tipping point and, with the 35 words it took for Barack Obama to be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, everything changed.
