A terrific show of law-respecting unity and pride: hundreds of thousands of smiling New Yorkers--young and bouncy, lame and halt--joining similar numbers around the country and the world.
It was puzzling, however, that none of the marchers (actually too crowded to march, more like shuffling) had an answer for the question, "If Trump resigned tomorrow, what, within our constitution as it stands, would you want? What is your goal here?"
In equal numbers, there was "Huh?" and "Hillary" and "Interesting question." No one had an alternative that would honor the system.
When Donald Trump decides he's not interested in being president but would rather jet around, organizing rallies and tracking his ratings, we should tell him that's a fabulous idea, and encourage him to do that, starting this minute and taking his family with him.
That would leave us, according to our laws, with Mike Pence. Pence believes in few sensible things, but he can behave like a sane person, within civilized norms. He won't tell the CIA no one loves it more then he does, and he probably does not want the civil wars Trump is inciting.
Pence and his cronies would be more aware of million-folks marches and millions of calls and letters (which many marchers and non-marchers haven't bothered with and must get busy on.) That's your and my job, as we now see.
So, our immediate task is to save Trump's face and make him feel that he's so wonderful that he should hand off this forming government stuff, and get on with his business deals, rallies and statements. Forget revenge. The country has a system that elected him.
It is a measure of our greatness that we are allowed to choose as president a clown married to a pole dancer. Our next job is to make sure our senators (everybody has two) and reps on every level know what freedoms we got out and marched for,and insist be preserved.
From Thucydides:
"So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die... a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh... Their story..lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset."