030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3, Page 1: The best thing that happened at the Inauguration is that nothing happened

030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3, Page 1: The best thing that happened at the Inauguration is that nothing happened

Okay, so - that happened.

The oddest thing about the inauguration is that, if you managed to ignore the 20,000-plus National Guard troops in the city and how the area around the Capitol was turned into a Green Zone nearly worthy of Baghdad - neither of which you could actually see while watching the event - and then just squinted a little, it looked, well, almost or at least kinda, normal. Which was probably the best thing about it, that what happened was that nothing happened.

I have to say that I was not surprised at the lack of attempted violence. I know others were; my best friend by her own account was really stressed out the entire preceding week and got little sleep the night before. Not from excitement, from worry.

But while I was of course concerned, I was not particularly worried, for much the same reason I was not at all surprised at the lack of violence the weekend before, despite some predictions of violent demonstrations in all 50 state capitols.

Here's why: The mob that stormed the Capitol building on January 6 was full of arrogance and bravado and no doubt would have been a much greater threat on Inauguration Day but for two factors not present during the riot, factors which are good ways of heading off that kind of behavior from that sort of yahoo.

One is to make it clear you're prepared for them. Which is what the security and the National Guard were about. It was likely - particularly in the number of troops - somewhat ever the top, but I expect it was intended to do more than just provide security, it was intended to be a warning for the future, to send a message of "look what we can gather against you on short notice."

Which relates to the other thing and why, I think, the weekend rallies were so few and so, at least by comparison to other similar events, quiet: the hundreds of arrests made in the week following the riot. Because it presented something that I believe that a good number of those people in the mob never considered at the time: the potential for consequences. And tough talk and bravado have been known to melt in the face of that potential, proving once again that despite their swagger and their attempts at mockery, it's the right wingers who are the snowflakes.

None of this means, I want to emphasize and as I've said several times now, that it's all over. None of this means that the danger of violence or even more of insurrection has passed. None of this means that our political structure, a democracy which is clearly flawed but functions, is secure from attempts at violent overthrow.

Even less does it mean that we are no longer subject to the efforts to undermine that democracy through assaults on voting rights, civil liberties, and privacy - but that is an ongoing topic for another time.

It does mean that for the moment - for the moment - that danger has been pushed into the shadows and is more likely to manifest itself in isolated terrorist attacks, isolated here meaning with no easily seen pattern of location or time or even type of target, looking for opportunities to create disruption and social havoc rather than any large-scale assault. In other words, it means we may be facing the situation in our day-to-day lives that millions of people in countries around the world face in their day-to-day lives and have been facing for years.

So it's not over and won't be over, which makes it even more important that we strive to be the best, the most just, nation we can.

One hopeful sign that came out of Inauguration Day was the number of executive orders that Blahden signed straightaway, orders reversing Tweetie-pie orders, along with announcements that there are a good deal more to come over the next week.

I'm sure you know that I call him Blahden because I could never get excited about his candidacy. I said he needed to come into office claiming a mandate for his policies but I was afraid he would come in saying "We've got to look forward, not backward" and "How can we placate the GOPpers?" On his first day, to my pleasant surprise, he acted like a man with a plan.

Maybe he can prove it to me, I still have real doubts, but he did get off to a good start on Day 1.