2021
January
20
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

January 20, 2021
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There’s a lot of pomp, ceremony, and tradition on Inauguration Day – speeches, prayers, parades, and swearing-in ceremonies – even in the scaled-down version we saw Wednesday in Washington.

These are, of course, designed to honor and reinforce America’s democratic transition of power.

But there’s a quiet, simple gesture that may be just as important. It’s a handwritten note left in the Oval Office by the outgoing president for his successor. 

In 2009, George W. Bush wrote, in part, to Barack Obama: “The critics will rage. Your ‘friends’ will disappoint you. But, you will have an Almighty God to comfort you, a family who loves you, and a country that is pulling for you, including me.”

In The Atlantic, Alex Kalman collected five of these departing missives. Most are written on White House letterhead. But Ronald Reagan’s note to George H.W. Bush in 1989 offered a touch of humor: It included a Sandra Boynton sketch of half a dozen turkeys perched on a prostrate elephant and the advice, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” 

President Donald Trump challenged many democratic traditions, including refusing to concede or attend the inauguration ceremony. But the White House says he left a note for the new president.

These cursive batons are humble, personal expressions of grace befitting those who hold this high office. And they’re poignant examples for nations – and families – riven by political differences.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

We asked some prominent people for advice on how to unify the nation. Their responses range from building trust to leaning into collaboration. The mayor of Miami says, “Look for solutions that are not simply bipartisan but nonpartisan.”

Profile

Stephen B. Morton/AP
Rev. Raphael Warnock waves to supporters during a drive-in rally, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021, in Savannah, Ga. Rev. Warnock, a Democrat, won election to the U.S. Senate in a Jan. 5 runoff vote.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock’s historic election suggests a significant demographic shift in Georgia, and the American South, toward voters with strong social justice values. It’s also seen as a rebuke to white nationalists. 

Here’s our story about savings clubs harnessing the power of encouragement and accountability to build financial freedom. In South Africa, the approach was tested by the pandemic, and survived.

Bob Edme/AP
People arrive to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination against COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Bayonne, France, Jan. 18, 2021.

Globally, French citizens have one of the lowest levels of trust in the COVID-19 vaccines. We looked at the roots of this skepticism, and the role public officials play in fostering it.

Difference-maker

Ann Hermes/Staff
Daisy Hampton noticed that students with disabilities aren’t always supported by classmates. This past summer, she learned that students lacking laptops for remote learning is a widespread problem. So she pivoted from her focus on friendships to include distribution of donated laptops.

Closing the digital divide is the latest initiative born out of seventh grader Daisy Hampton’s efforts to forge friendships with peers who have disabilities.


The Monitor's View

AP
A protester from the Uighur community living in Turkey holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul against Beijing's oppression of Muslim Uighurs in western Xinjiang province.

In his inaugural speech Wednesday, President Joe Biden set a task for himself to bring “America together, uniting our people.” As big as that task might be, it was made slightly easier Tuesday by the outgoing Trump administration. The State Department agreed with a key foreign-policy position of Mr. Biden and officially designated China’s treatment of its minority Uyghurs as genocide. In a rare case of unity, two presidents have now given voice to at least a million voiceless people in secret concentration camps in China where they are being tortured, forcibly sterilized, or even killed.

Unlike many domestic issues, American leaders have worked hard to maintain a bipartisan foreign policy, especially in trying to prevent mass atrocities. Such unity remains a template for tackling issues such as race, poverty, and lately, the coronavirus. It has been sustained by the fact that the United States has a record of trying to end genocide based on the ideal of protecting innocent people during a conflict or under a dictatorship.

Since 2017, China’s rulers have ruthlessly repressed the mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang. The 11 million or so Uyghurs and other groups have found few countries to defend them. Now the U.S. has put the Chinese government on notice that bilateral ties depend on Beijing adhering to the international convention against genocide.

In his designation of genocide inside China, Mike Pompeo, Mr. Tump’s secretary of state, said: “So long as we remain silent, party elites will continue to commit human-rights abuses against the people of China with impunity. We cannot allow this cycle of evil to continue.” Mr. Biden, meanwhile, has made clear his commitment to preventing genocide by nominating Samantha Power as a member of his National Security Council and as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Author of the book “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” Ms. Power is a “leading voice for humane and principled American engagement in the world,” Mr. Biden said.

Rallying Americans around the task of ending the most heinous of crimes has a long history, going back to the liberation of Jews during World War II. Once again, the U.S. appears committed to helping a minority group under threat, this time in China. For Mr. Biden, such unity abroad is a good start to finding the unity at home he promises as the new president.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Even when inharmony seems to reign, we can let God, Love, light our path to unity, healing, and progress.


A message of love

Ann Hermes/Staff
Ann Hermes, the Monitor's photographer covering Wednesday’s inauguration of President Biden, asked all the people whose picture she took the same question: What does America need right now? These are some of their portraits, and their answers.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

As a bonus, we’re including a link to Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb.” She’s the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Watch her recitation and you’ll understand why she was chosen for this honor. 

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow. We’re working on a story about the changing nature of patriotism in America. 

More issues

2021
January
20
Wednesday

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