May These Two Days Be as Boring As Possible

Praying for an extremely dull new era.

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this day of service, has felt less like a moment of public altruism in honor of a legendary American figure and more like a day to rock silently back and forth in your chair, terrified by what the next 36 hours may or may not bring. You know what Monday felt like? It felt like that scene in Saving Private Ryan, where everyone solemnly listens to records and smokes nervously while they wait for the tanks to roll into the village.

I’ve made that analogy before, but the difference this time, of course: This time everyone’s just praying there aren’t actual tanks.

Wednesday is going to be a day in American history unlike any other, an inauguration of a new president in the middle of a pandemic and only two weeks after a horrifying insurrection attack on the nation’s Capitol. The outgoing president not only refuses to attend the transition of power, but in fact will not admit that he has lost at all. There have been multiple threats not just on Washington, D.C., but…