NAD

“THE HILL WE CLIMB”: HONEST JOE BIDEN ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S SHOULDERS

di Marco Sioli*

Photo by Andrew Harnik

The reflection on Joe Biden’s speech for the inauguration of his Presidency, move us to consider his long relation with the history of the United States. Quoting George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, he refers explicitly to the danger of white supremacy, and the problem in a divided society along color line as well as class line. Differently from Barack Obama, who certainly is a better speaker, Joe Biden offers his image of “Honest Joe” distant from Donald Trump’s misogyny and dystopia, but really interested in addressing the question of how to find a solution for a “house divided” in time of peril, as “Honest Abe” did during the Civil War. Also the choreography of the event, with famous artists singing “Amazing Grace” and the “National Anthem”, finally brings us to a young black girl, Amanda Gorman, a poet laureate, offering to a world-wide public her story: the slave ancestors, the trouble to grow up with a single mother in Los Angeles, and the terrific words of her poem “The hill we climb”. Continua a leggere→