A Dark Speech Divided Against Itself

If those garish stage lights at Joe Biden's Independence Hall campaign event last Thursday were powered by lithium batteries, they certainly didn't do much to tone down the essential bipolar psychosis of his speech. The fact that the White House went so far as to dub the performance by his Dark Brandon persona The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation is one clue that they want us to believe that Civil War 2.0 is already well underway. If all the slanted polls say it too, then it must be true.

Come to think of it, has the first Civil War ever really ended? It was itself the direct spawn of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, documents created by an elite cadre of white males, a good portion of whom fancied themselves to be the literal owners of other human beings. When they decreed that all men are created equal, they weren't kidding, given that women, the enslaved and the indentured were not as entitled to the same life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as the landed property-owning gentry (and the yeoman class they needed to serve them and fight their wars for them) were. Ditto for constitutional civil and voting rights. Not for nothing did our esteemed founders also decree that the Senate would be chosen by elite politicos, and not by popular vote.  

But like all politicians before him, Biden persists in keeping the origin/founding myth alive. He sets the misleading tone right in his intro, claiming that two nonexistent things - "democracy" and "equality" - are suddenly and outrageously "under assault."

Usually when modern elite leaders fear-monger for the purpose of gaslighting and subduing the teeming, restless masses into a state of compliance and governability, they point to the Enemy Outside. But seeing that, post-9/11, Biden has a permanent, unlimited and undebated global war budget and unlimited surveillance powers, it's time to reset the terror dial.  He's got Europe under NATO control, so what better time than the coming US elections to ramp up the fear a lot closer to home? 

He wants people to believe that the MAGA movement sprung fully-formed from the fevered brow of Donald Trump, and that this form of fascism is not a result of half a century of crushing antisocial neoliberal policies, which he had a big hand in creating, thanks to his own half-century in the halls of power. 

Let his Narrative begin:

So tonight, I have come this place where it all began to speak as plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face, about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats, and about the incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.

Now would be a good time to remind ourselves that whenever officials and elites say "we," they mean themselves  - not little old you. They've got the power, if and when and how they choose to use it. So when Biden says the future is "incredible," he doesn't necessarily mean it'll be amazing and wonderful. It's a very subtle threat that dissidents and insurgents of all stripes will never believe what just hit them.

 We, the people, have burning inside each of us the flame of liberty that was lit here at Independence Hall — a flame that lit our way through abolition, the Civil War, Suffrage, the Great Depression, world wars, Civil Rights. 

That sacred flame still burns now in our time as we build an America that is more prosperous, free, and just.

Build Back Better is the slogan that can never die, as the red footlights enflame anew, and the shadowy Marines lurk in the background with only their blindingly white gloves broadcasting a muted dog-whistle of a Greek chorus. And remember, folks, you're in a sacred place no matter what the First Amendment says about states and religions.

That is the work of my presidency, a mission I believe in with my whole soul.

Who needs a functioning brain when you're armed with an invisible soul?  Remember, you are in a very sacred place. Faith makes its own reality. To wit: 

But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.  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 — (applause) — 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.

He didn't mention any mainstream Republicans by name, but he had to be referring to his buddy Mitch McConnell, and maybe even the ghost of Strom Thurmond. 

Biden did make a secret, backroom mainstream deal with McConnell right after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade. The president agreed to nominate the Senate minority leader's Kentucky crony, an anti-abortion lawyer, to a permanent federal court judgeship. The deal backfired only when fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul invoked some arcane veto power - not because of any pressure on Biden himself from progressives.

Meanwhile, the far-right makeup of the Supreme Court, so carefully orchestrated by McConnell, will remain intact under Biden's watch. The blue-ribbon panel he named last year, to recommend reforms of the highest court, came back empty. The commission put the kibosh on such democratic improvements as term limits for justices, a system of revolving judges from lower federal courts, and court-packing for purposes of balancing out the current highly skewed extremist ideology. That non-result was almost guaranteed, given that Biden had installed a roughly equal number of mild elite liberals and conservatives, even a rabid Federalist Society member named Adam White, to the cabal. It was just another example of manufactured gridlock to preserve the status quo.

Now comes the part of Biden's speech that goes full-scale bipolar. After bragging about his relationship with fine, upstanding Republicans, the president asserts that these same noble officials are being held in thrall to Trumpists, their free will mysteriously having been yanked right away from them:

 But there is 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.

Are you getting an unpleasant picture of Mitch and the gang all chained to the wall by whip-wielding leather-clad dominatrices holding fistfuls of bribery cash in their hands? Joe Biden seems to think that the solution is to save them by scolding them from the right:

And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.
 
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. 

No wonder Trump fans are howling on and on about how insane this speech was. Biden is trespassing on their right-wing territory, accusing them of hating law and order and the police and the constitution. It kind of makes it harder for them to accuse the president of being a Marxist, even with his begrudging cancellation of a small portion of student debt for an artificially small percentage of Debt Slave Nationals.

They (the Trumpies, not the debt slaves necessarily) 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.

Um... I seem to recall that the Republicans stole the 2000 election right out from under Al Gore. The corrupt Florida secretary of state and the corrupt Florida governor, one Jeb Bush, fixed the election in favor of corrupt little brother George Bush, and this fix of stopping vote-counting altogether was duly given the imprimatur of approval by the corrupt Supreme Court. That set the precedent for all manner of voting restrictions and dirty tricks in the ensuing decades. The Trumpies are merely playing a very oafish game of copy-cat with their Stop the Steal dogma.

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.
 
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan 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.

Liberal critics have noted that Biden very carefully omitted the words "abortion bans" from his litany. Just as infuriating in my view is his critique, throughout this speech, of "political violence," as though his own hands are not soaked with blood as red as the garish color of his backdrop. He has already requested an additional $14 billion in weapons for his proxy war with Russia. He was the lead Democratic cheerleader and enabler of George Bush's invasion of Iraq. He was the architect of the militarization of local police forces with high tech surplus weaponry during the Obama administration. And that's just a portion of his half-century's worth of bellicose policy-making. It doesn't even take into account his outsize role in constructing Incarceration Nation, creating more black prisoners than there were ante-bellum slaves.

They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people.  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, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.

Perhaps Biden finds Michael Luttig (who has not actually been a sitting judge for more than a decade) so respectable because as an adviser in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, he was integral in greasing the skids for Clarence Thomas's confirmation before then-Senate Judiciary committee chair Joe Biden. Having just been named to the federal bench himself, Luttig delayed his own swearing-in until Thomas himself was safely confirmed, so as to avoid any appearance of cronyism, corruption and conflict of interest.

Luttig eventually quit the bench to take a lucrative position as chief legal adviser at Boeing. He left that job in 2009 as part of the high level executive fallout from the 737 Max scandal, which revealed that cost-cutting measures by the defense giant had caused airplane crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia and the deaths of 346 people.  

Luttig then became chief corporate counsel for Coca-Cola, where Biden's niece, Missy Owens, was in charge of the government affairs division (lobbying)her job including working closely with the Obama/Biden administration from whence she came, as well as with the ensuing Trump White House, over an eight year period. She was recently hired by General Motors to coordinate that company's  transition to electric vehicles, with a big financial assist from the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act.

A mere six days after Luttig joined Coca Cola last year to defend the company brazen tax dodging case lobbed against it by the IRS, the company abruptly reversed a decision to stop donating to any more presidential inaugurations, having gifted the Trump gala more than $3 million in 2016. It only gave the Biden inaugural a little over $1 million; the celebrations were downgraded because of the pandemic. But that still is a very respectable amount, and Biden deems Luttig respectable by dint of his never-Trumpism and his expert lawyering at the Jan. 6th-based impeachment festivities.  Ergo, he got a mention in the Dark Brandon speech. Cronyism has nothing to do with it, of course.

Ready for more bipolarity hilarity? Biden's at it again:

I believe America is at an inflection point, one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after. And now, America must choose to move forward or to move backwards, to build a future or obsess about the past, to be a nation of hope and unity and optimism or a nation of fear, division and of darkness.

MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live, not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies. But together, together, we can choose a different path. We can choose a better path forward to the future, a future of possibility, a future to build a dream and hope, and we’re on that path moving ahead.....

MAGA Republicans, it seems are not redeemable. The subliminal message here is that if you are angry and afraid, because of a pending eviction or lack of medical care when you get sick or hurt, or if the last 50 years of neoliberal austerity and the most extreme wealth inequality in modern history has gotten you down, then you're living in some chaotic darkness as well. The only chaos you have to fear is Trump chaos itself. Never mind the new report showing that life expectancy in the richest nation on earth has taken the biggest nosedive in more than a century. In Biden's world, all you need is a path to a future of hope.

 Biden-think reaches peak wishfulness as he winds the stemwinder down (I put the obvious whoppers in bold, if only because they are so unashamedly, psychotically brazen): 

But I see a different America — an America with an unlimited future, an America that’s about to take off. I hope you see it as well. Just look around. I believe we could lift America from the depths of Covid, so we passed the largest economic recovery package since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and today America’s economy is faster, stronger than any other advanced nation in the world. We have more to go. I believe we can build a better America, so we passed the biggest infrastructure investment since President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and we’ve now embarked on a decade of rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, highways, ports, water systems, high-speed internet, railroads.... 

We’re going to end cancer as we know it, mark my words. We’re going to create millions of new jobs and a clean energy economy. We’re going to think big. We’re going to make the 21st century another American century because the world needs us to. That’s where we need to focus our energy. Not in the past, not on divisive culture wars, not on the politics of grievance, but on a future we can build together. And that’s precisely what we’re doing — opening doors, creating possibilities, focusing on the future — and we’re only just beginning.

Our task is to make our nation free and fair, just and strong, noble and whole, and this work is the work of democracy, the work of this generation. It is the work of our time for all time. We can’t afford to leave anyone on the sidelines. (Yes, we can) We need everyone to do their part, so speak up, speak out, get engaged, vote, vote, vote!

Finally, he cuts to the chase. It's nothing but a boilerplate campaign speech livened up with technobabble and much horn-tooting about little things accomplished and big things unaccomplished and big thoughts about big things saved up for later, and that totally awesome road to the Future.

 Vote them back into power - not so they can make your lives better in the here-and-now, but so that they can keep BS-ing you about a future utopia that will only happen if you vote and you vote and you vote some more at the designated two and four-year intervals.

 Speak up and speak out... unless, of course, you're a MAGA person. If you're not a MAGA person, even if at times you're desperate enough to fleetingly contemplate becoming one only because you're so disgusted with the Dems, then the proper, preferred and respectable way to speak up and speak out is to vote three times. (votevotevote).

 Then, you will be cordially invited to shut up and go away.