semipatriotic

— Dazed, like sleepwalkers, Washingtonians clustered that evening and late into the night in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue. They sang the National Anthem and other patriotic or semipatriotic songs, and when they tired of singing, they stood, or sat, or even knelt on the grass, simply staring at the now-darkened Executive Mansion, even as they or possibly others might turn their eyes toward the heavens, hoping, beseeching. . . .