Giddy about ‘living backwards’ on Jan. 20

“That’s the effect of living backwards …
It always makes one a little giddy at first.”

– The Red Queen to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”

America is set to experience a “living backwards” moment on Jan. 20, the day our once and future president, Donald J. Trump, is sworn in as 47.

I expect to be more than a little giddy as our nation transports back in time to revive a Trump presidency interrupted by Biden’s 2020 win, the mailed-in Trojan Horse gift of COVID voting irregularities.

Voters have emphatically declared their desire to embark upon the adventure of “living backwards,” rejecting the disastrous quadrennium of the Biden/Harris years, which have crippled families through inflationary spending, recklessly endangered citizens with an open-border strategy, exasperated normal Americans by embracing woke absurdities and infuriated conservatives by incessantly labeling Trump and (by inference always and often explicitly) his supporters as racists, misogynists, xenophobes, fascists, uneducated, garbage and more.

Time for “living backwards,” the voters decreed, leaving me giddy at the thought of how Trump will open his inaugural address. Once written off as a political cadaver by his foes after the 2020 election and the January 6 riot of obviously non-insurrection proportions, I suggest that Trump open his speech by saying, “My fellow Americans! In conclusion, let me begin.”

Such an announcement of a new beginning, victoriously following his once virtually universally assumed political demise, would be met with frenzied excitement, just as his opening line, “As I was saying …” in his Oct. 5 return to Butler, Pennsylvania, signaled a miraculous new beginning to the massive and boisterous crowd, the MAGA leader standing on the very spot where a bullet had not only cut his speech short, but had very nearly ended his life only 84 days earlier.

“As I was saying …” was pure gold, Trumpian in its triumphant taunting of those who have, from the beginning, sought to bury the MAGA movement.

Less Trumpian, perhaps, but equally emphatic, would have been the words I might have written, were I one of his speechwriters: “In conclusion, let me begin!”

As a pastor of 50 years, I imagine with mischievous delight the looks on my congregants’ faces were I, after a longish sermon of some 30-40 minutes, to announce, “In conclusion …” then, followed by an anticipatory pause, followed with, “Let me begin.”

“Yikes!” I can imagine them thinking. Are we to live backwards, rewind to allow the Beginning to follow the End, the First to follow the Last, Alpha to follow Omega? Not many in my congregation, I suspect, would be even a little giddy at the thought of doing it all over again.

Such is not the case with the political rewind to be experienced on Jan. 20. Red America is absolutely giddy at the thought of our political “living backwards” moment, conveying us back to the bitter 2020 COVID-aided conclusion of Trump’s first term. Opening his speech with, “In conclusion, let me begin …” Trump would be announcing not only his return to the Oval Office, but also his at first gradual, then sudden, erasure of the Biden years.

Being “a little giddy” at the thought of “living backwards” derives from the conversation between Alice and the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 children’s book, “Through the Looking Glass,” sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Here’s a bit more of that passage:

Alice says, “Living backwards! I never heard of such a thing … I can’t remember things before they happen!”

The queen replies, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”

Alice asks, “What sort of things do you remember best?”

The Red Queen’s reply to that question is my favorite line: “Oh, things that happened the week after next.”

How, though, can one “remember” things that “happened” week after next?

I suggest that America is about to discover how such a thing is possible.

We will “remember” the secure border that will be again, and very soon. We can remember, because we’ve already seen it in the first Trump presidency.

We will “remember” energy independence that soon will be achieved. We can remember, because we’ve already seen it in the first Trump presidency.

We will “remember” Supreme Court picks that can clearly state the definition of a woman, unlike Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson. We can remember, because we’ve already seen it (times three) in the first Trump presidency.

We will “remember” a time of peace in the Middle East, which already is beginning to blossom with this week’s ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, which Netanyahu is calling a gift to Trump. We can “remember” this reality yet to arrive because we’ve seen it before with Trump’s Abraham Accords (for which he should have received the Nobel Peace Prize) and will witness it blossom yet again into flower as Trump erases Biden’s Iranian policies allowing the regime to fund both Hamas and Hezbollah.

So, Alice, were you to ask me, “What sort of things do you remember best?”

Oh, I “remember” so many of things that will happen in the weeks following Jan. 20, and I’m getting a little giddy at the thrill of “living backwards.”