One of Donald Trump's very-very-first official acts in office was to declare the day of his own inauguration a "NATIONAL DAY OF PATRIOTIC DEVOTION". This particular proclamation reads like the winning entry of a junior high school essay contest, which given his team's past history may or may not be where he got it from.
A new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart. We are one people, united by a common destiny and a shared purpose.
And some of the biggest protests in American history, don't forget that part. Nothing says “shared purpose” like protests that dwarf the inauguration itself.
Our Constitution is written on parchment, but it lives in the hearts of the American people. There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no peace where the people do not pray for it.
This would be the same Constitution that Trump and his Trumpettes say no longer applies, when it comes to one of the few parchment-written rules as to what a president can or cannot do to enrich themselves once in office, so no law where the people do not follow it was, we presume, intended to be ironic.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J [...]
Yada yada, fine, whatever. So here's the thing. Trump declared the day of his own inauguration, "January 20, 2017" to be a "National Day of Patriotic Devotion", because he wanted to.
This proclamation was filed ... on Monday. For publication on Tuesday.
For a Day O' Patriotic Devotion scheduled for ... last Friday.
Now, I'm an open-minded fellow—but what exactly are Americans supposed to do, here? Is this an executive instruction to be patriotic last Friday? Should we have retroactively flied our flags ten feet higher that day? Dyed our cats and dogs festive, patriotic colors? How precisely does declaring a single day o' patriotism for a day that has already passed by accomplish any—you know what? Screw it. Whatever.
It's enough to know that Donald Trump tried to make his own inauguration a day of patriotic "devotion" on the part of all the rest of us. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?