Can a nation even HAVE A SOUL?
Biden thinks YES! And if we’re lucky, he won’t be wrong.
“YOU ARE HERE!” ... Well, okay, Abe Lincoln was there ... or allegedly. They say that’s him at Gettysburg, about to make maybe the best speech ever made by an American president about the soul of the nation, or at least the shortest -- although this doesn’t really look like him to me. Beard too big? But then, it’s probably his own fault for not speaking long enough for anyone to get a good photo of him doing it. (Mathew Benjamin Brady - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikipedia / Public Domain)
“THE CHICAGO TIMES, PRO-DEMOCRATIC AND ANTI-LINCOLN, ACCUSED THE PRESIDENT OF ‘IGNORANT RUDENESS,’ ‘BOORISH-NESS’ AND ‘VULGARITY’ FOR INCLUDING POLITAL PARTISANSHIP IN HIS GETTYSBURG SPEECH”,
... wrote Jacqueline G. Goodwin, Ed.D. in Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg Magazine in November of 2019, continuing:
“The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly flat dishwatery utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States,” the Chicago Times wrote.
The paper was especially upset about his statement that “all men are created equal,” and cited the three-fifths rule, contained in the Constitution, for counting slaves.
“It was to uphold this Constitution, and the Union created by it, that our officers and soldiers gave their lives at Gettysburg. How dared he, then, standing on their graves, misstate the cause for which they died, and libel the statesmen who founded the government? They were men possessing too much self-respect to declare that negroes were their equals, or were entitled to equal privileges,” the Chicago Times wrote.
That was just one of the many negative reviews of Lincoln’s speech. Here’s another from the Harrisburg Daily Patriot and Union, now the Patriot-News:
“We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.”
(Just before the 150th anniversary of his Address, in 2013, the Patriot-News “announced that it regretted the error”, retracting it, “stating that it should have recognized the greatness of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at the time it was delivered.”)
Not all the reviews were dismissive. This was from the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican:
It said that his “little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma. Then it has the merit of unexpectedness in its verbal perfection and beauty …. Turn back and read it over, it will repay study as a model speech. Strong feelings and a large brain are its parents.”
Feeling about Lincoln the way we do today?
According to C-SPAN, a survey of historians put Lincoln at #1, immediately followed, in this order, by Washington, FDR, and then his cousin Teddy -- in 2021, 2017, and 2009 polls. It’s a bit of a shock to look back to the distain so many felt for him in his own time:
In the South, naturally, Lincoln was vilified as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
But his opponents in the North could be almost as harsh. For years, much of the Democratic press had portrayed him as an inept, awkward, nearly illiterate bumpkin who surrounded himself with sycophants and responded to crises with pointless, long-winded jokes. Many routinely referred to Lincoln as “the jester”.
History can be hilarious when viewed in retrospect, when an arguably pretty good president might be treated well by posterity, even though, in his own lifetime, he was mocked and slammed with all sorts of gratuitous insults by partisan hacks who, of course, were only doing what they thought was their conscientious duty:
“blundering” and “insincere”; “It was a speech that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, delivered by a man who didn’t believe it”; “Biden’s greatest political asset is when Americans are focused on Donald Trump and not on the bumbling, rambling fossil in the White House and his overreaching and under-delivering presidency” ~ Dan McLaughlin, National Review
“That was the most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech I have ever seen from an American president. Joe Biden essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic. Truly shameful.” ~ Ben Shapiro @benshapiro
“Tonight, Joe Biden vilified millions of Americans in a divisive & angry speech that was detached from the reality of his political failures. He isn’t actually interested in restoring the soul of the nation, he’s only interested pitting his fellow Americans against one another.” ~ Ted Cruz @tedcruz
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy tweeted, ... "Seriously, who gives a speech warning people about how dangerous Republicans are to Democracy while having a background that looks like the Soviet Union and Hitler had a baby?"
Yeah, true, many on the right (Portnoy has identified as a libertarian) mentioned those cosmetics, with its spooky trick-or-treat vibe, which I hadn’t even really noticed. But as a supporter, I guess I hadn’t been looking for that kind of stuff.
Although, in fairness, the Republican reviews weren’t all bad. This was David Brooks on PBS NewsHour:
And so to reduce it only to the politics, I think, robs that phrase, the soul of America, of its key power, which is to capture the depth of the problem we face, which is not just politics, but deep down in our relationships and the social fabric of the country.
Bingo!
It would not be out of line for someone (like me) to wish that all Republicans were as thoughtful as David Brooks.
IT’S BSJ TRIVIA NIGHT! CAN YOU NAME THIS AMERICAN HERO? ... Hint: He was an army colonel who won one of our very first military battles! (And what do you win if you correctly guess his name? I’ll tell you that as I give you the answer, somewhere down below.) (Wikipedia / Public Domain)
Okay, I’m changing up the usual format this week, so you should consider all the Lincoln stuff up there as both my usual “introduction-of-topic” and “looked-it-up” segments, combined.
And now, we’ll quickly jump directly into the “My-personal-opinion” portion of tonight’s entertainment.
BUT HERE’S THE THING ...
Let’s just pretend this discussion is all in good fun, that nothing said here that could possibly be characterized as “insulting” (within bounds) should be taken as an insult.
Is that okay with you, you stupid blockheads and right-wing snowflakes?
(Eh-eh-EH!?! Back off!! “All in good fun!”, remember?)
I mean, how can helpful criticisms ever be exchanged if almost anything said as a conversation-starter is taken as a slam, is the way I look at it.
So here goes.
Just as Lincoln’s enemies found “partisan politics” in his Gettysburg Address (I’m guessing it was that outrageous “created equal” claim?) but failed to notice his larger meaning back then (e.g. possibly that we actually were created equal?), I see Biden’s “enemies” disputing his call to “end American violence” (not to mention, of course, that weird lighting!) -- yet still ignoring his main point, that not everybody in our nation is offering “legitimate Political discourse”.
So here is a selection of “Soul-of-Nation” excerpts -- you could call this a reiteration of the speech’s most salient (to me) points -- but please feel free to let me know in the comments if there are any of these you disagree with, and why.
(Note: Bolding is mine.)
My fellow Americans, please, if you have a seat, take it.
(How we doing so far? No problems? Okay, then, let’s keep going.)
This is where America made its declaration of independence to the world more than two centuries ago, with an idea unique among nations: that in America, we’re all created equal.
(Holy Crap!! Doesn’t he realize that’s exactly where Old Abe got into trouble??)
With three simple words: we, the people; we, the people. These two documents and their ideas they embody — equality and democracy — are the rock upon which this nation is built. They are how we became the greatest nation on earth. They are why, for more than two centuries, America has been a beacon to the world.
... Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.
Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election, and they’re working right now as I speak in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
Okay, now that is a bit partisan. He’s complaining about reversing certain policy positions that mostly only Democrats (and possibly some Independents) tend to endorse, while both mainstream and MAGA Republicans alike mostly don’t. Maybe he should have left it out because it interferes with the larger point.
The following, on the other hand, is a non-partisan accusation, aimed specifically at MAGA supporters:
They promote authoritarian leaders [Trump admires authoritarians more than he admires Washington or Lincoln, who didn’t believe in that stuff], and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots. And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. [Forget 70 million, we’re talking way more who voted for the Democrat!] This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people. That’s why respected conservatives like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans “a clear and present danger” to our democracy.
... There are far more Americans, far more Americans from every background and belief, who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.
This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it. This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it. This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it. ... we are still at our core a democracy.
Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we must be stronger, more determined and more committed to saving American democracy. And MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy.
We hear — you’ve heard it, more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool. So, I want to say this plain and simple: There is no place for political violence in America, period, none, ever.
Okay, wait! We need to take a brief detour at this point. There’s something we have to talk about that is rarely, if ever, discussed.
I’ve heard several mocking reactions to that last line, which imply that Biden seems to be forgetting about all those Black Lives Matter “riots” that animated Republicans and others on the right during the summer of 2020, much of which apparently came from too much watching of the same clips of violent video playing over and over on Fox News Channel.
This story ran on (I’ve found pretty trustworthy) the Business Insider website of June 11, 2020:
Protests this past week have been largely peaceful, but Fox News continues to show old footage to rile up viewers
The nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd took a peaceful turn in the last week. But Fox News has stuck with visuals and segments focused on instances of rioting and looting, often running B-roll footage from prior weeks and protests.
While some of the footage carried a timestamp to show a date — such as a "Fox & Friends" segment with shots of fires in Minneapolis marked May 28 — the continued focus on rioting and looting can be misleading and has often been described in the present tense.
While there is not that much researchable data on the so-called “riots”, here’s one study we do have.
It was compiled in 2021 by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an international independent non-partisan non-government project that sometimes advises governments and even the U.N.:
Key Findings
The BLM movement has remained overwhelmingly non-violent.
Approximately 94% of all pro-BLM demonstrations have been peaceful, with 6% involving reports of violence, clashes with police, vandalism, looting, or other destructive activity.
In the remaining 6%, it is not clear who instigated the violent or destructive activity. While some cases of violence or looting have been provoked by demonstrators, other events have escalated as a result of aggressive government action, intervention from right-wing groups or individual assailants, and car-ramming attacks.
In contrast, demonstrations involving right-wing militias or militant social movements have turned violent or destructive over twice as often, or nearly 14% of the time.
Police have taken a heavy-handed, militarized approach to the movement, escalating tensions.
Authorities are three times more likely to intervene in pro-BLM demonstrations than they are in other demonstrations.
When intervening, they are more likely to use force against pro-BLM demonstrators: 52% of the time, compared to 26% of the time against all other demonstrators.
These trends hold whether demonstrations have remained peaceful or not: authorities have engaged non-violent protests associated with BLM more than twice as often as other types of non-violent protests.
When intervening, authorities have used force 37% of the time against peaceful pro-BLM protesters, compared to under 20% of the time against other peaceful protesters.
When right-wing militias and militant social movements engage with pro-BLM demonstrators, the risk of violence increases.
At least 38 distinct, named far-right groups have engaged directly with pro-BLM demonstrators.
Approximately 26% of these demonstrations have turned violent or destructive.
At some point, maybe I need to publish a column on the BLM protests, but until then, here’s a sneak peek at another of their findings:
The push to portray the demonstrations as inherently violent and more dangerous than other social movements became a defining position for the Republican Party and a major talking point in the reelection campaign of then-President Donald Trump.
Although the US Office of Special Counsel determined [during the Trump administration] the BLM movement was apolitical in July 2020 (USA Today, 17 July 2020), the BLM movement nevertheless became a highly contentious and partisan issue. In late June 2020, Trump accused a New York-based BLM activist of “Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!” on Twitter (Washington Post, 25 June 2020).
(Whoa!! Someone should try to find out if that activist was caught persuading a mob to stop Congress from counting electoral votes! Because if so, then Trump was right to accuse him of “Treason, Sedition, Insurrection” — as ANYBODY who does that should be!)
By the beginning of July 2020, Trump began referring to the BLM movement as a “symbol of hate” (BBC, 2 July 2020). He later tweeted violent videos inaccurately or misleadingly attributing blame to BLM and intentionally conflating the movement with anarchists and ‘Antifa’ (Washington Post, 1 September 2020).
By August 2020, the BLM movement was a primary topic at the Republican National Convention.
So here’s your takeaway:
Republican and conservative talking points on Black Lives Matter, despite being hardly at all discussed endlessly anywhere outside their private echo chambers and cable news channels, are pretty much bogus.
But before we go back to the speech, I can quietly tell you that our special guest, in that above painting, is American hero Benedict Arnold, a colonel in the Continental Army who captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and was later promoted to major general, but then, while in command of West Point, he shared military secrets with the British, afterward joining their side to fight against his own country, thus becoming our nation’s most famous turncoat, at least for his time.
Any mention of Benedict Arnold here that might imply a connection to any recent American ex-presidential-turncoat is purely not at all coincidental, but just this writer’s opinion, meant to drive home that if any American leads an attack against America, whether president or not, that’s much more serious a matter than that particular turncoat’s supporters seem to be treating it.
For one thing, he should be banned from ever again holding any public office, and for another, seriously, why the hell is he NOT ALREADY IN FEDERAL PRISON?
Hey, if I had done it, we would have insisted upon that! (Okay, when I say “we”, okay, but with the possible exception of me insisting on that, of course.)
Oh, wait, almost forgot! You guessed right and are wondering what you won? Nothing!! But of course, you already guessed that — but still, thanks for being such a good sport!
Meanwhile, let’s go back to Biden’s speech:
You saw law enforcement brutally attacked on January the 6th. We’ve seen election officials, poll workers, many of them volunteers of both parties, subject to intimidation and death threats. And, can you believe it, F.B.I. agents just doing their job as directed, facing threats to their own lives from their own fellow citizens.
Ladies and gentlemen, we can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. They’re incompatible.
We’re a big complicated country, but democracy endures only if we, the people, respect the guardrails of the Republic. Only if, we the people accept the results of free and fair elections. ... Democracy cannot survive [if] one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: Either they win or they were cheated.
I will not stand by and watch — I will not — the will of the American people be overturned by wild conspiracy theories and baseless evidence-free claims of fraud. I will not stand by and watch elections in this country stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost.
I was hoping at this point to look into how many “irregularities” and suspicious cases of fraud there were in the 2016 presidential election that elected Donald Trump, but my plan was thwarted by the fact that Trump didn’t have his army closely watching every fraudulent hint of fraud back in 2016, as he did in 2020.
All anybody could verify at the time were four cases in the whole country -- a few Republicans who tried to vote twice and a forged local mayoral race. Still, worth noting — (“After all, Trump himself said that it was Democrats who commit fraud, not Republicans”) — is that there were no Democratic fraud attempts, nor any from independents.
But there is this, a paragraph by Ron Elving of NPR this last week that pretty nicely lays out the problem Biden is talking about (and which I will try to keep over on this side of the page so as to avoid it getting it confused with Biden’s speech):
“Trump continues to insist, after 20 months, that he won an election that he lost by more than 7 million in the popular vote and by 306-232 in the Electoral College. Neither he nor his acolytes have produced any evidence to undermine those totals. But they have eroded confidence in the system and its caretakers to the degree that a majority of Republicans tell pollsters they think the election was ‘stolen.’”
Two things:
(1) Maybe H.L. Mencken was right when he (probably) said something like, “No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people,” and
(2) Maybe our Founders didn’t work hard enough to design a government able to withstand the onslaught of citizens who are led by a seemingly-crooked commercial real estate magnate who urges them to believe it’s okay to be frustrated beyond reason when they get a government they don’t like, and then encourages them, when it comes time to vote, to vote for the biggest slimebucket on the list, it doesn’t even matter, because all politicians are crooked liars anyway.
So now, for one last time, let’s go back:
I believe America is big enough for all of us to succeed, and that is the nation we’re building, a nation where no one is left behind.
Okay, now let’s stop!
Although I agree with him on this, maybe he should realize that this statement is a statement of partisan belief*, something that could be left out of the speech so as not to bigfoot his more crucial message, but also not to give his critics an excuse to pounce.
(* What I mean: It’s generally a liberal belief that if any one of us Americans falls down, the rest of us should help them back up, and also that the country, as a whole, will be better off if we do that.
Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that each individual needs to be responsible for the consequences of their own choices, good or bad, and government should stay the hell out of it.)
There’s at least one alleged crime the president pointedly left out of his litany -- probably because it’s currently being litigated and he wants to stay out of it -- was Trump’s suspected top-secret- and otherwise classified-material mishandling issues.
But the danger Trump’s hypocritical carelessness poses to the nation is no small thing, much more potentially dangerous than failing to return a library book.
Yet, in his 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly cared about this sort of thing:
Speaking in July of that year, Trump said [Hillary] Clinton's mishandling "disqualifies" her from public service.
"Any government employee who engaged in this kind of behavior would be barred from handling classified information," Trump said.
But this recent instance isn’t Trump’s first offense. In 2017, as reported here by Business Insider, he hosted Russian diplomats in the Oval Office:
Trump then went on to share with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov and [then Russian Ambassador Sergey] Kislyak intelligence connected to the Islamic State in Syria. The information came from Israel, which had not given the US permission to share it with the Russians because it could have compromised an Israeli source in the region.
That same meeting may also have helped prompt us to extract a top-secret spy from Moscow, one who had access to Vladimir Putin.
A person directly involved with the discussions told the outlet the US was concerned that Trump and his administration routinely mishandled classified intelligence and that their actions could expose the covert source as a spy within the Russian government.
Sure enough, as sitting president, while he may have more legal leeway than most people, his lack of expertise made him just as vulnerable to doing real-world damage as your average White House tourist who accidentally comes into possession of the nuclear codes.
Also remember, that in the early 1950s, some people were executed for over-sharing our nation’s secrets with Russians.
But unfortunately, Biden’s target audience doesn’t seem to be buying what he’s selling.
Although “normal” Republicans are acting as if they didn’t notice that Biden wasn’t referring to them as offenders, I have to suspect they’re all just pretending not to know the truth.
The president’s speech was his desperate attempt to tap on the head of America, like the standup comedian taps on the microphone when nobody laughs at his jokes and asks, “Hello?? Hello!! Is this thing working?”
Except that the attempt, while a noble try, seems to have failed.
Why?
Because the problem is worse than he thought, because the non-MAGA Republicans have no incentive to stop playing the MAGA game. (First they look at Trump? Then they look at Biden? Then they look back at Trump?) So, at least for the present, MAGA seems to be their only game in town.
MAYBE THE IDEA OF BIDEN INSERTING THOSE LIBERAL TALKING POINTS WAS A MISTAKE, SINCE IT INTERFERRED WITH HIS MAIN ARGUMENT,
... that, at least in theory, all of us non-MAGA people need to meet somewhere, just like the founders did, to solve an existential problem that rises above normal politics.
Maybe we should book Independence Hall in Philadelphia?
Okay, yeah, that might make the point we want to make, but the people who need to get that point would likely refuse to.
But then again, I might be wrong about not pushing partisan beliefs?
Maybe mixing political positions into a sermon is justifiable. Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, author of "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them", tells NBC why:
Americans can freely vote for MAGA Republicans in the upcoming 2022 (and 2024) elections.
But placing and keeping these people in power in the short term would likely result in long-term one-party rule, as well as massive restrictions on the liberties of racial, religious and sexual minorities, as well as women.
This is a hard truth that every American must face. It is the job of the president to speak frankly to the nation, even about uncomfortable truths. In his speech, Biden did not shirk from this duty.
In other words, if we don’t stop the semi-fascistic MAGAs now, innocent people may suffer, and maybe for a long time to come. Hmm.
Also, but maybe David Frum was right in speculating that Biden’s speech was a deliberate trap, scheduling a speech in Philadelphia while Trump was in the same state to endorse in two big races, just to taunt Trump into insulting the state’s largest city!
And then Trump fell into it.
You may have noticed Trump sure has a talent for falling into traps. It’s because he’s so predictable, making him an easy target. Then again, you may not have noticed that, since his other talent is making people somehow believe his screwups are really examples of his strategic genius!
He's like the “Shadow”, with the "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds”, except for evil!
Although maybe he does screw up on purpose. Yes, it keeps him in the headlines, but what good is that if all it gets you is destruction of your party and a piss-poor general election average?
Truth be told, he’s just not a very good politician. Which amazes me that the fact he’s so overrated seems not to matter one bit in how much influence he wields.
And speaking of the truth, there’s probably little, if anything, Joe Biden can do to rally America to briefly pause its very sick so-called politics while it purges itself of its poisons.
To repeat one last time:
All our non-MAGAs -- Democrats, yes, and may even MAGAs, but especially those regular-people Republicans -- need to stop playing the game for a while and figure out how to get the power away from Donald Trump and that screwball MAGA crowd, who at this point, are out there, in a state near you, earnestly trying to undo the “Miracle of 1787”.
In other words, yeah, they may not even like Trump, but they like the Democrats even less, and that’s been the secret sauce keeping Trump alive all along.
So yep, there may be some way to stop Trump’s influence, but only one that’s moonlighting as a miracle.
But in our “Make America GOOD again!” convention at Independence Hall, maybe some vendor outside will sell hats (purple ones, I guess) with that saying on it.
I’d buy some! I think they could become collector’s items!
Hey, Wait! I just realized something! Remember that issue I published a little way back, about the economy and recessions and all those market bubbles, with suckers willing to pay way more for something than it was actually worth?
And then, at some point, the bubble bursts?
Well, just as at the end of “Alice in Wonderland”, when Alice said,
“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
... someone, who at this point is unknown, will wake up and shout to nobody in particular but the whole world in general:
“DONALD TRUMP is just a damned BUBBLE!!!”
While then, everybody else keeps wondering (I suppose, ironically, out loud!):
“SO WHEN WILL THE DONALD TRUMP BUBBLE BURST?”
And afterward, WHO, other than Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy, will be caught on some microphone saying,
“What, ME? NO, no! (Ha-ha-ha!) I was onto that guy WAAAY before everybody else!!”
The bottom line is, yes, Trump is dangerous to the nation, but give him a little time and he will pop!
“And”, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, always signaling the end of something — more often than not, somebody’s life: “... so it goes.”
