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Daily Herald opinion: The test of time: A day of contrasts and the process that helps us navigate them

A peculiar atmosphere will dominate the 20th of January, 2025, when it dawns on Monday — and not just because bitterly cold temperatures will move the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States indoors.

Coincidentally, Donald Trump will retake the presidential Oath of Office on the same day the nation pays tribute to the life of civil rights icon the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The legacies of the two leaders stand in sharp contrast, and it well may be that the one message most worth celebrating Monday is that we live in a country in which people can peacefully strive for the nation’s betterment despite the widely divergent goals of two such different individuals.

It is frequently said on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that we have achieved much in the past six decades but we have much work still ahead to secure a truly just society. That is true. It is also true that we will not reach that goal unless we do it together. Indeed, the very definition of “just society” must surely imply a strong foundation of unified goals and harmonious spirit.

Unfortunately, we anticipate the likelihood of such a sentiment from President Donald Trump on Monday with more doubtful hope than confident expectation. What we have seen and heard leading up to this day has suggested quite the opposite — that we are headed for a period of disruption, acrimony and retribution. Of one-person rule rather than cooperative or even contentious interplay among diverse interests. Of separation rather than unification.

May we be wrong.

If we are, we suspect that the roots of a more productive government will be evidenced in comments offered in a somewhat different context, though not altogether so, in a report last week on Highland Park Democrat Brad Schneider’s elevation to leadership of a new centrist caucus in the House of Representatives.

“I fundamentally believe that the best legislation is always done in a bipartisan way,” Schneider told reporter Russell Lissau. “When Republicans and Democrats work together, they pass legislation that withstands the test of time.”

Legislation that withstands the test of time. That concept resonates with us today as we reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.’s emphasis on timeless goals of dignity and equality in the midst of the realities of ever-shifting public policies of the past two decades. We yearn for new policies with that kind of endurance.

In his farewell address to the nation last week, outgoing President Joe Biden tucked the response to that desire within a warning about the potential for concentrated power among the wealthy in coming years. Whether you share Biden’s apprehension or not, his philosophical basis for it deserves reflection.

“In a democracy, there’s another danger to the concentration of power and wealth,” he said. “It erodes a sense of unity and common purpose. It causes distrust and division. Participating in our democracy becomes exhausting and even disillusioning, and people don’t feel like they have a fair shot. But we have to stay engaged in the process.”

Perhaps therein we find the agent that enables a nation like ours to adapt and thrive despite sometimes profound shifts in policy and mood. A sense of unity and common purpose. The process. It is that alone that allows us to move the ever-swinging pendulum of national goals and moods and interests back toward balance, and it is only our unified involvement in it that gives us the power to move it to places that withstand the test of time.

It has enabled us to achieve much since Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day. It will enable us to achieve much more — as long as we participate and as long as we participate together.

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