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When the joyous MVP of the winning Super Bowl team is corralled surrounded by ecstatic fans and asked for his reaction on national television about his championship, he replies with a panting smile, his eyes out of orbit and his head swinging side to side, "I don't know what to say. There are no words that can capture my feelings at this present moment. It's like a dream. Everything is surreal. I'm speechless."

I don't have the luxury of a victorious athlete. As I watch the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, I can't say that there are no words that can express my exhilaration or that I'm speechless. Why can't I humbly admit that I'm tongue-tied! Why can't I slip out the backdoor by declaring that the moment transcends words?

Because I'm a writer. If I were to resort to these excuses, I would sound more ridiculous than an umpire who defends his inability to call balls and strikes because the pitcher is firing fastballs of such velocity that he can't see the ball. His profession requires him to  rise to the occasion. I have to put the scene unfolding before me into perspective. "I'm expressionless" just ain't gonna cut it.

On the contrary, historical events like this inauguration that has come at a high cost for our nation are supposed to inspire prose that borders on poetry. In staying with the baseball analogy (I learned writing as a sports scribe and we can never escape our roots. Nor do we desire any other fate), I am stepping to the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series with the home team trailing, 3-0. A la Casey at the Bat, I'm expected to swat a grand slam. The pitcher winds and fires:

Am I living a fairy tale watching a triumphant Hansel and Gretel being crowned for slaying the witch who wanted to gnaw on their bones? Am I witnessing Jack cutting down the beanstalk and the vile giant crashing to his death? Have the Pied Piper and his rats been thwarted even though they have left a terrible plague in their wake? Is this the happy ending?

First and foremost, there are no happy endings. We learned that reality when we discovered that Santa Claus no longer existed. Then God fell. And last, but hardly least, loved ones have dropped by the wayside never to be seen or touched again. 

In politics, the struggle never ends. You win a battle or two, but your hold on power is brief. When you have the hammer, you have to pound the opposition. For four years this country absorbed a beating from a democratically elected dictator who did everything in the last days of his presidency to eliminate democracy in order to become a dictator.

He was defeated in spite of an insurrection he directed against the U.S. Capitol where Congress was counting the votes that would install Biden as the next president and deprive Trump of his power. The vice president, senators and and representatives had to flee the chambers for their lives.

Biden inherits a sick country. More than 400,000 COVID deaths, the economy in shambles and Trump's strategy of dividing and conquering along the lines of hate that has filled all of us with a debilitating rancor, America is hardly great. 

Only an egomaniac would seek a greatness that never existed and will never exist since humanity by its very nature is incapable of greatness. How can mankind put itself on a pedestal when there are no creatures that stalk this planet with so much killing and murdering on their minds interspersed by brief interludes of body-numbing sex before the bloodshed recommences?

Nobody epitomized these animalistic instincts more graphically than Trump who bragged that he could shoot and rape anyone he wanted with no fear of repercussions. As bad as he is and will continue to be unless the judicial system cages him, what does it say about our country when 74 million citizens voted for him!?!?

We celebrate because Trump brought us to the edge of the abyss. We looked down and saw that there would be no future for our descendants if Trump survived the election. Biden will draw us back from the cliff and prevents us from dashing ourselves against the rocks below. 

But our celebration is short; we must brace ourselves for the counterattack. The dark forces of bad and wrong are blinded by a fury that the legions of good and right have prevailed, but they know that both Hitler and Stalin were imprisoned after initial failures before they gained absolute control of their governments and countries.

Our system took a hit that it hadn't experienced since the Civil War, but our institutions held against Trump's treachery and traitorousness, but the racists, the rednecks, the renegades, the reactionaries, the Religious Right bigots and the rabid right-wing rich recognize that in two years the Republicans can begin their comeback and in four years reign with total control.

I watch Biden place his hand on the same Bible that southern preachers once claimed justified slavery. I listen to Biden swear to uphold the Constitution, the same Constitution that the Republicans are manipulating to salvage a tyrant whose wild rants and shameless lies led to the deaths of five persons in the halls of one of our most sacred buildings.

I am savoring this positive change in our fortunes. I'm a soldier on leave who is making the most of his R&R knowing full-well that he will be returning to the trenches along the front lines. With the knowledge that the tide has turned in our favor, we must impose our agenda on the opposition, compromising if it's one step forward, never compromising if we must abandon our core values even if our principles cost us power in the future. We are not afraid to lose battles, but we will not lose the war against Trump and his barbaric tribes. 

Let's make America...America again. Trump brought us to a new low. There are no words that can express the hope that Biden will bring us to a new high.