People might be a tad too cruel to Joe Biden, accusing him of hypocrisy for calling President Trump a fomenter of division and racism. I freely admit I was one of those who had a negative reaction to the Democrats’ newly-minted presidential candidate going on so gushingly about Black Lives Matter and the whole “need to eliminate White Privilege” codswallop.
This is after all the guy who co-authored the 1994 Crime Bill which disproportionally increased the incarceration of Black Americans. Before that he managed passage of the 1988 Anti Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes – sentences that treated crack cocaine – cheap and widely available – as far more serious than its powder counterpart, popular with the Yuppies of the day. That resulted in more disproportionate incarceration of black Americans. Along the way he gave speeches saying he “didn’t give a damn” about criminals’ youth or circumstances, chided Ronald Reagan for being “soft on crime (!) and in the main adopted a “lock ‘em up and forget ‘em” persona – because it had traction at the time.
Now, however, we see a completely different Joe Biden, because, well, TRUMP…
Then I had a minor epiphany: maybe, just maybe, Joe isn’t being a hypocrite after all. Maybe, just maybe, he’s forgotten he did those other things.
I don’t know which thought is more frightening.
