Nicely good god, it is actually taking place is not it? The US presidential inauguration all the time has a momentous air about it — the handover from one elected monarch to a different — however this time it is the shift from one complete order of actuality to a different. Or again to a different.

For 4 years the US and far of the world has endured and loved a presidency that was all foreground, all the time in your face, an exhausting however enervating parade of chaos, given a eager edge by the truth that its perpetrator may have launched a brand new, all-involving conflict — nuclear or in any other case — one thing out of the attain of Rodrigo Duterte or Viktor Orban.

And plenty of thought there’d be 4 extra of it as properly, as we cruised in direction of an election with the Democrats decided to raise anybody to the nomination — the late Phil Spector, a ficus plant — apart from Bernie Sanders, take one other loss and look forward to ’24.