“…great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority .”
-Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Armstrong, 1808
On Wednesday, April 28 the divider-in-chief addressed a near-empty Congress to crow about his accomplishments, mischaracterize and revile his opponents and shill for his ultra-partisan agenda to an audience ill-suited to indicate the temper of the Republic. At least due to COVID, most solons had a legitimate excuse to avoid this amorphous mass of fibs, half-truths, nostrums and radical left fever-dreams.
The stenographers of the legacy media were at their bootlicking best; NBC news mentioned “insurrection” twice in the first two minutes of their introduction and practically swooned through their commentary at the end.
From his first comment the President emphasized Democrats’ obsession with separation of Americans into groups: saying “madame Vice President” was a very big deal because, well, women are among those who are more equal than others in Democrat world. At least in terms of optics. But Senate Democrats still pay their female staffers less than males – and the numbers are better on the other side of the aisle.
President Biden’s first theme was unrelieved catastrophe: we are living through the worst crisis in our history, suffering the worst economy and the effects of the worst attack on government since civil war. But fear naught. We have now had “100 days of renewal” and “210 million Covid shots,” a result of “…the last 100 days.” Not a whisper of the “warp speed” program that made those 210 million shots possible and thus made economic recovery possible. Not a breath of thanks to his predecessor, who was behind the all-in effort. A pretty churlish moment.
Joe did blow his own horn as the president created more jobs than any other – without mentioning that most of those workers are just getting their jobs back.
In fact there was lots and lots about jobs, all made possible by money taken from you. Union jobs, of course. Jobs on railroads. Green jobs. Jobs curing cancer. Jobs minding kids. Jobs teaching, because China wants to supplant the US as the essential nation.
About that: if real-world competition were really the impetus, wouldn’t it be more important to concentrate resources on curriculum, not on how many are teaching it? If one normalizes the self-loathing delusions of the “1619 Project” and insists with Leftist vogue-ish critical theory that there are no objective facts, China will soon be competing with the Three Stooges, not with those who put Endeavor on Mars or helped Al Gore invent the Internet. Because, despite what Joe’s teacher union insiders whisper in the ear, “out-educating” does not have to do with seat time.
There was the usual Democrat demagogery about the “one percent” “paying their fair share to fund all of the proposed largess. And the assurance that his proposed unprecedented profligacy “Will not add to be tax burden of the middle class.” Remember that. It’s a lie.
There was a stunning admission: America emits only 15% of the gasses causing climate change, so even if we do everything Joe plans, nothing will happen if others don’t restrict themselves similarly. Thus, the president explained, we rejoined the Paris climate accord, which requires China and India – the world’s largest and third largest polluters – only to consider cutbacks in the next decade. This makes sense because we’ve all become residents of Bizarro World.
There was some meaningless twaddle on international relations. President Biden reassured us that Putin understands we will react if he is naughty; similarly, Iran and North Korea. We will apply diplomacy and “stern deterrence” (whatever that means). Hopefully it is not the sort of stern stuff Climate Czar John Kerry engaged in with the thugs in Tehran while trying to footsie them into a nuclear deal.
But according to the Divider in Chief, our real problems are not international. The Most Important Threat to Our Nation Today is “white supremacy.” Or as Joe describes it, “The knee of injustice on the neck of black America” (remember: he wants to unify Americans…) So “we have to come together” on police reform. Again proving that plagiarism is his true medium, Biden lifted wholesale Barack Obama’s “arc of justice” and wandered around a bit about “equity,” which he refuses to define – whether out of fear of repercussions when the meaning becomes clear, or out of convenience. It was shameful.
There were other similarly bad ideas. “Gun violence has become epidemic in America” the president opined, but then mouthed the usual nostrums about magazine size, “assault weapons,” “gun show loopholes” and “ghost guns.” There were no words about who was killing whom and where, because that might not fit the myth about strict gun laws providing security. On immigration there were all the wrong answers: giving up on border security and handing out the precious gift of citizenship to all here illegally; pouring money into famously corrupt central American countries in hope of stemming the flow… “The last president broke what was working,” the president quipped. Sorry, Joe; you have that exactly backwards.
There was the jarring comment that “We have a democracy.” No, Joe, we don’t. And it says a lot that, after those four decades in Washington, you still don’t understand that.
The speech’s conclusion contained the meant-to-be-uplifting comment that “The future belongs to America” It fell flat because most witting Americans understand that it doesn’t. The future is no one’s by right. It belongs to any country who believes it does and wants it enough to unify and work like hell for it. That used to be us, but after decades of sapping by the likes of the current president and his cronies, the issue is uncertain. Joe’s most recent speech was ample proof of why.
Well done, Joe. Well done.
