"Schneider's glasses"

The golden age

The super-rich gather around the new, old president.

The inauguration ceremony in the USA has brought numerous observers onto the scene. Author Robert Schneider also took a look. 

The inauguration ceremony of the 47th President of the United States of America was hard to beat in terms of mediocrity and lack of spirit. Perhaps it had something to do with the biting sub-zero temperatures in Washington, which is why nothing heart-warming happened in the rotunda of the Capitol and certainly no real atmosphere was created.

The Americans have never been able to celebrate in style. As various military corps marched in singing, one or two celebrities were jostled because everyone was standing so close together.

They were indeed standing shoulder to shoulder. The entire who's who of Silicon Valley was there. The tech billionaires Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (SpaceX), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Sundar Pichai (Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon). Even the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, was there, even though Donald Trump wants to quit the service. Or not? We don't really know.

By the time all the nobility (the women zombies with Botox faces, the men yawning) had finally taken their seats, silly marching music was playing. A moderately talented piano player filled in the gaps with Mozart strumming, and a tenor with no middle register bellowed like a lunatic into the microphone.

The oath and Trump's inaugural speech followed. He spoke of the dawning "golden age" and made a terribly serious face that seemed almost ridiculous. The longer he rambled on about this age, the clearer it became that America is on its knees. "Humiliated", as Trump put it.

Then Carrie Underwood was supposed to perform the song "America the Beautiful". But something didn't work with the microphone or the sequence. Endless waiting. Even Trump looked martyr-like into the rotunda. The "golden age" is still a long time coming.