Glimpse of hope Amid the gloom

It feels like the best of times and the worst of times. The Covid pandemic has intensified. The UK recorded the highest daily death rate in the world this week, as new variants prowl our streets, forcing us inside and shutting down our lives, while Scotland’s fishing industry chokes on Brexit paperwork chaos and another hard lockdown makes us “sick fed up” with it all. We need good news.

This came from America where the drama of Trump’s final hours and Biden’s inauguration had us spellbound. Never mind the politics, what about the optics!

There were The Donald and Melania, walking the walk, first to Marine One, to be whisked off to Joint Air Base Andrews, where The Donald talked the talk one last time, a series of jaw-dropping claims that rang around the world, delusion and illusion loud and proud. Then, loaded with Trumps, Air Force One left for Florida (a sunny place for shady people, some may say) with Frank Sinatra’s My Way as the soundtrack to a perfectly choreographed take-off. The incredulous laughter of the CNN commentators, however, was unscripted.

For the first part of the journey Melania, the media tells us, wore an elegant black Chanel jacket worth $5,600, her Birkin bag worth a jaw-dropping $70k. As the unmasked Trump family made their last official trip on the government dime, conspicuous consumption was on magnificent display – the family glossy and privileged, all looking, as they say in Australia, flash as a rat with a gold tooth. It was all about the optics.

Back in Scotland, Janey Godley, the comedian and social activist whose famous four-word placard protest against Trump at Turnberry in 2016 made world news, turned a jubilant 60. In Holyrood in 2021 Nicola Sturgeon again summed up Trump in four words – “don’t haste ye back”.

The optics of the Biden inauguration could not have been in stronger contrast. On the lawns of the Capitol – which just two weeks before had been the scene of unimaginable thuggery as a veritable lynch mob of “patriots” stormed the building and five people died – taste, resolution and a sincere pledge to democracy were on display. If this is how a new world order is ushered in, it started off well.

There was the first woman vice-president of the United States, Kamala Harris, taking the oath with a pride and purpose that shone from her. Jill Biden was elegant and composed (in a blue Markarian dress and coat, worth $5,500). Lady Gaga’s gilded “bird of peace” almost stole the show while Amanda Gorman, the young poet laureate, pretty much did. All guests were masked and careful and the man in the scarf, who disinfected the podium after each speaker, spoke volumes for the seriousness of the pandemic’s toll in America.

But I think the winner of the optics on the day was Bernie Sanders. There he was, seated on his socially distanced chair, looking like someone’s dad in a warm anorak and mittens repurposed from an old jumper, and carrying a brown manila envelope as though he’d just popped in on his way to the post office. The memes on social media just keep on giving.

In his speech, Joe Biden noted the end of an “uncivil war”, and became the first American president to specifically rail against white supremacists – he also highlighted racial and social injustice, and the pursuit of power and greed over the common good. It was a promising start.

Here at home, the lockdown, the deaths, the struggling and dying businesses, are all taking their toll. We’ll get through it, of course we will, but it’s

still hard for people like you and I, stuck in our homes, deprived of social contact.

This week my phone has rung more than usual with calls from older Courier readers. They are lonely. They don’t have social media, they want to hear a friendly voice. My colleagues tell of the trials of home-schooling young children, one wondered what Scottish babies born during the pandemic will make of only seeing other people with masked faces in the first year of their lives. Another says her small boy has had little to no interaction with other kids his age. My young nephew has missed out on the social experience of university. Our elderly mum is unwell and in hospital for (non-covid) treatment as I write, and we can’t see her. There are many who have had to say goodbye to loved ones without being able to see them, many more who can’t see elderly parents. The unseen consequences of this pandemic are cruel and exacting to us all.

So what hope do we have? Well, the vaccine is being rolled out across Scotland. That’s huge. The £150 million Tay Cities Deal was finally signed in December, bringing with it hope for future prosperity, employment and a better life for nearly 500,000 people in Angus, Dundee, Fife and Perth and Kinross. There’s hope Dundee’s new 4,000-seat e-sports arena will be completed by 2024. The Eden Project is coming to Dundee too, hopefully also by 2024, and also bringing with it a boost for the region. There’s much more besides, if you start looking.

Perhaps sometimes, when you need hope, you just need to look for it.

ALL CHANGE: Main picture, new president Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden at the ceremony; top, Bernie Sanders makes an unintended style statement; and poet Amanda Gorman brings uplifting words to the occasion.