Psychiatrists often talk about the phenomenon of projection – a patient’s tendency to attribute to imaginary others, usually foes or figures of fear, characteristics of the patient him or herself. The quirky dodge allows very disturbed people to live with truly awful thoughts and tendencies. After all, they are aspects of other people’s minds, often those of enemies real or imagined.
We saw that sort of projection live and in garish color on Thursday afternoon during Joe Biden’s uber-weird and disturbing Philadelphia address on the “Battle for the Soul of America.”
Evidently, ironic comedy is out of Joe’s reach. Did he even consider that background he was using – Independence Hall splashed with lurid red floodlights with US Marines at parade rest thrown in – might be just a little evocative of the mud he was trying to fling at Republicans? Who found the unquiet ghosts of Leni Riefenstahl and Albert Speer to doll the place up? Creepy.
Then there were the words, which were even worse. Here’s a tip: you’re the furthest thing possible from a “uniter” when you call 74-odd million of your fellow Americans representatives of “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” Even if you try to qualify it later, the damage is done. Particularly if you then try to smear something called “MAGA Republicans” with not believing in the constitution in the next paragraph. Rich from a guy who opened our Southern border, uses the Department of Justice like his party’s personal Good Squad and issued more executive orders in his first year than any president going back to Jimmy Carter.
Following that whopper, Biden asserted that MAGA Republicans “do not respect the constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law,” referring in a feeble attempt at proof to their dubiousness about the 2020 presidential election and making a baseless statement about “an America where there is no right to choose.” But doubt arose, and not only in MAGA-dom, about the use of extra-constitutional means by state election officials and executives to change constitutionally-mandated election procedures under the color of legality provided by emergency declarations. In battleground states, mostly. And “not accepting election results?” Please. Better color every Democrat apparatchik at the upper levels of the FBI with that one, starting in 2016 or maybe before. Add Maxine Waters, Chuck ‘let me tell you’ Schumer, the “Squad” and even Al Gore. Remember him? But in Bidenworld, only Republicans are “intent on destroying American democracy.”
By the way, using reversal of Roe v. Wade’s right of “privacy” as proof that Republicans are not fond of the Constitution is a real hoot. Even Justice Blackmun, who wrongly appropriated the ninth amendment to conjure a national “right” to abortion could not find said right in the Constitution. He relied instead on Justice Douglas’ looney assertion that a right to “privacy” could be found in the “shadow” of unspecified “emanations” from the Bill of Rights, and that abortion would probably be in the next drawer down, or words to that effect. It sounds classier than smoke and mirrors, but the current court finally admitted that, yeah – it comes down the same thing. So they corrected Blackmun and, using a proper reading of the ninth, sent the issue back to the states where it belongs. It isn’t “MAGA Republicans” who misuse the Constitution.
Joe also howls about how “there are public figures today, yesterday on the day before, predicting, calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets.” I wonder if he’s thinking of Congresswomen Cori Bush or Ann Kirkpatrick, or other Democrats who support Black Lives Matter’s 2020 “mostly peaceful protests?” Or rioting, arson and pillage, as most of the non-addled population saw them. Or perhaps he’s thinking of Democrats who backed ANTIFA in the selfsame “peaceful protests” that saw billions in property damage and at least 35 deaths.
Maybe he was thinking of the mob of people calling for violent protests following Donald Trump’s election. Or the people picketing and threatening Supreme Court justices’ homes – a clear violation of Federal law. Maybe he was thinking of his Vice President, who set up and shilled for a bail fund for the rioters, looters and arsonists arrested in the “Summer of Love,” 2020.
Nah. The only people Joe thinks threaten violence are MAGA Republicans. To a person, they’re mad, bad, violent threats to the very existence of the Republic. He says so.
Maybe he’s just forgotten the other stuff.
Joe doesn’t seem to understand what “MAGA” stands for, or what people who embrace the title believe. Here are a few highlights:
MAGA – “Make America Great Again,” for those living under a rock or on Ceres for the past six years or so – is an attitude and a set of policy preferences shared by people of all flavors. They uniformly like and respect the Constitution, and suspect anyone who wants to infringe on its practices and protections. Like Habeus Corpus for example, notably absent in the current government’s prosecutions of those arrested for small offenses during the January 6 madness at Capitol Hill. Or forth amendment protections for a citizen’s right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure…” They like smaller and more limited government, lower taxes, a productive economy which recognizes the role of small business and generally leaves its citizens alone. They would prefer this country be energy independent and that our nation’s foreign enemies be quiescent.
MAGA and other Republicans view the current cozy relationship between the Biden administration and the media, particularly social media such as Facebook, with unease. It seems undertaken to subvert Constitutional provisions against government censorship through contracting such censorship out. Mark Zuckerburg’s recent revelations regarding Facebook’s treatment of Hunter Biden’s laptop is only one of many proofs that this unease is justified.
It is also reminiscent of one of the axioms of Benito Mussolini, the founder of actual Fascism: “Nothing against the State,” and the use of media as a weapon against one’s foes. Joe is obviously thinking of the Man in the Mirror when he accuses his opponents of being “semi-Fascist.” Remember, he has a long history of plagiarism…
Then there’s this about “Make America Great Again:” who among us would not want our country to be better off than at present? Aside from Hunter’s paymasters in Beijing, that is…
From my perspective, the only ones seemingly cheering for this nation to collapse into “carnage and darkness and despair” are Progressives. They despise the common people, who they see as a “basket of deplorables,” to borrow a phrase. And they fear them, because the reaction from Moline or Missoula or Memphis to the president’s increasingly outré remarks is a roar of derisive laughter, not a tug of the forelock expected by Joe’s puppeteers.
In sum, the man is a pathetic mess, his policies a corrosive shambles, his team dangerous idealogues and the end state they desire for the country a centralized, authoritarian oligarchy in which a narrow elite maintain control forever through manipulation, “coordination” of social elements, fear, force and use of state organs for private benefit. What’s that called, again?
Oh, yeah…
