As a child growing up in the 1960’s, the airing of The Wizard of Oz was an annual event not to be missed. It was long before VCRs, DVDs, video stores and online streaming enabled you to watch this iconic film whenever you wanted to. If you weren’t in front of your television on the night of its broadcast, you missed out. I  anticipated watching The Wizard of Oz with equal amounts of excitement and dread, dread because eventually The Wicked Witch of the West would make her appearance in the film. The Wicked Witch, played by Margaret Hamilton, was an absolutely terrifying figure to me as a little boy and one of the most malevolent and sadistic villains ever to grace the silver screen. Hamilton found her second wind later in life as the grandmotherly TV salesperson for Folgers Coffee, but she’ll always be The Wicked Witch to me.

In the film’s climactic scene, Dorothy is being held captive in the witch’s castle. Her little band of fellow travelers is outside plotting her rescue. Once she is  freed from a locked room, Dorothy and her friends are then pursued through the castle by the witch and her gang of axe and spear wielding  soldiers. Suddenly, they find themselves cornered. The Wicked Witch sets the end of her broom on fire and uses it to ignite the Scarecrow. Horrified, Dorothy grabs a nearby bucket of water and throws it on her friend. The witch is in direct line of the water. Water of course turns out to be the witch’s undoing. She slowly sinks into the ground screaming, “I’m melting, I’m melting!” When the soldiers realize what Dorothy has done, they fall to their knees in thankful supplication and proclaim, “Hail Dorothy!” The menace has finally been vanquished.

When Joe Biden places his right hand on the Bible on January 20th to take the oath of office, myself along with tens of millions of others in the United States and around the world will all breathe a collective sigh of relief. This will be our “Hail Dorothy” moment. The evil and hate filled regime of Donald Trump will finally have come to an end. He leaves in disgrace as the only president to have been impeached twice. Trump’s lasting legacy will be his complicity in the murderous and violent assault on our nation’s capitol by an armed and angry mob of his supporters, many of whom are members of violent white supremacist groups. During his four years in office, Trump has sown the seeds of hatred and division that have torn our country apart. Sadly, many of those seeds have come to fruition in the likes of senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and countless other mini-Trumps like them. The Trump presidency has been an unimaginable national nightmare. Like all nightmares, we eventually wake up but their effects can linger with us for a long time to come. 

President Biden carries a heavy weight on his shoulders. He will have the Herculean task of trying to unite our country and heal our deep national wounds. The road ahead is daunting and fraught with peril. Being a father and teacher of young children, I have no choice but to hold out hope that he is up to the task. God bless you Joe and… Hail Dorothy!