In the history of this country, there have been both good and bad presidential inaugurations, as there have been both good and bad presidential administrations. The good presidential inaugurations are fairly well-known. The bad, however, are rather more interesting.
During Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, Reagan’s personal friend Don Rickles, the revered comedian, performed at the gala. During his set, he prophetically joked about Reagan’s slowing cognitive abilities while on national television, then mimed being shot on stage.
During Andrew Johnson’s vice-presidential address, Johnson kissed the bible and was too drunk to administer the oath of office to incoming senators. He slurred his way through most of his speech.
Needless to say, inaugurations have been a mixed bag.
That being said, there has never been an inauguration quite like Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, which also happened to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The closest we’ve had so far is Trump’s first inauguration, which George W. Bush allegedly described as, “some weird s**t.”
In that sense, Bush would not be wrong about this inauguration either, which, following the heart of Trump’s recent rhetoric, was nothing if not inflammatory.
It is, however, what billionaire Elon Musk did after the event that has truly captured the nation’s attention. Charitably, it could be called a moment of energetic enthusiasm. Uncharitably, and perhaps more accurately, it could be called a Hitler salute. It certainly looked like a Hitler salute, especially since Musk did it twice. It doesn’t help that Musk famously supports AfD, a far-right German nationalist party, which has been classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence as a “suspected extremist” organization.
While some readers might have found this surprising, many Stags probably didn’t. This sort of rhetoric and symbolism is not entirely uncommon on college campuses and Fairfield is no exception. Anyone who has explored the deep places of the popular campus social media app, Fizz, will probably be aware of this. Extremism and hatred seem to be flourishing on campus, as has been reported previously in this paper. I’ve heard it in my hallways, and there is a good chance you have too.
This calls into question the role education plays in this country.
On June 6, 1944, 2,501 Americans died in a single day on the beaches of Normandy, attempting to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation. Thousands more were grievously wounded. This was an infinitesimally small fraction of the total human cost of the Second World War. More than 400,000 Americans died in the course of the conflict.
Few of the Greatest Generation remain with us today, and they are passing on every year. The job of teaching the lessons they learned has been placed on the people of the United States, and specifically on our educational institutions. In that respect, we may well be failing. Today, fascism is no longer a fringe ideology that hundreds of thousands of Americans died to defeat, but instead a very real expression of political will in this country, and on this campus.
In a now-deleted comment, one user on Fizz said, “Elon did NOTHING wrong! Everyone should see this!” This is in union with the constant yet underlying derogatory commentary on campus about the Jewish people, often in the form of unfounded claims about their connections to banking, insurance, and other such conspiracies. Commentary that is so accepted by some on campus that it is said as a matter of fact, and not in the whispers and small jokes that might be more common in other places.
Fairfield University, as a Jesuit-Catholic educational institution, should be the last place such rhetoric can survive. When students at this school see such behavior from national figures, the reaction should not be to laugh and to imitate, but instead to educate. That is, ultimately, what we are here for.
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