Today insanity peaks in the US as we come to coronation — I mean inauguration — day. It should take no more than an hour to get the necessary people together and administer the oath of office, but then people might think the president is a mere chief executive rather than a monarch. (Though these days monarchs usually have less power than the president of the US. So do the chief executives of most relatively free countries.) The imperial presidency is a distinctively American feature, having more in common with authoritarian states like Russia and China.

People are desperately realigning their beliefs to keep them consistent with their core principle, which is “If Trump wants it, it must be bad.” Yesterday a Bluesky post linked to an article telling the readers that moving the inauguration indoors because of the weather is horrible. Earlier, people were complaining about the bribes, er, donations that the inauguration was getting to pump it up into something like the Super Bowl. The list of big names attending is absurd. But now it seems the president has a sacred obligation to freeze outside and make everyone else freeze so it can be a Big Event.

This morning I saw a webcomic glorifying the TikTok ban, with a character saying how now she’d be free to go out and enjoy the sunlight (which somehow she wasn’t before?). Biden signed the ban, Trump opposes it, so now censorship is good and TikTok is bad. This supersedes the earlier principle that criticizing anything Chinese is “racist.”

As usual, I’m not linking to stupid items on the Web. There are too many of them, and they don’t need more publicity.

Maybe I should just ignore the news today and concentrate on more enjoyable things. I’ve been listening to an uncut version of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in segments; the whole thing is over 3 hours long. It’s fantastic, and listening to “selections” recordings doesn’t begin to do it justice. Yes, I’m still an atheist, but it combines superb drama with superb music.