Editor’s Note: This article is one of 50 in a series about Trump's first two years as president.

Right from the start, the Trump presidency was different. Donald Trump said as much in his inaugural address, casting his swearing-in as the start of a new era, one in which power over government would be returned to “the people.” Of course, that sort of rhetoric is normal new-administration bluster. But the real meat of the speech in no way resembled an American president’s inaugural address. And that’s where Trump expressed his distinctive view of the country he would lead.

With evocative imagery, he described a broken, defeated America. “Mothers and children” were “trapped in poverty,” he said. “Rusted-out factories [were] scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.” The school system, despite being “flush with cash,” was leaving children “deprived of knowledge.” And then Trump came to the darkest image of all: “And the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

Read: What does Trump actually think about gun control?

American carnage. It was an arresting phrase. Inaugural addresses have long produced memorable, occasionally beautiful oratory. Lincoln’s soars above all: “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” But even the average remarks have conveyed a love of this country and espoused a basic idealism about its role on Earth.