By Hank Beckman -
Joe Biden was sworn in as the nation’s 46th President last week, and the theme of his address could be summed up in one word: unity.
He rambled on about how fragile democracy was, how the “hallowed ground” of the Capital was shaken by the recent violence and how his predecessors from both parties were patriots and how America was a great country and how “we are a good people.”
But the main theme of his inaugural address focused on bringing together people for “that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity…Unity.”
While it consisted mostly of political pablum that should bore the average fourth-grader, media predictably gushed over the speech as if it were the greatest speech in recorded history, delivered by an orator the equal of Cicero, or at least Barack Obama. (Quick—and no Googling—do you really remember anything the Precious One ever said? No you don’t.)
But you expected that from a community of journalists who have essentially become the public relations arm of the Democratic Party, didn’t you?
Even Fox News got in on the act.
Chris Wallace, the Trump-hater whose mission in life lately has been to destroy his station’s credibility, along with its ratings, gushed over the speech like a schoolgirl swooning at a Beatles' concert.
Wallace judged it the greatest inaugural speech he’d ever heard, despite it consisting almost entirely of touchy-feely talking points that only the most bigoted and depraved would disagree.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with calling for unity in a presidential inaugural address, or extolling the virtues of the country, or praising his predecessors as a line of patriots stretching all the way back to George Washington. Nice sentiments, and definitely needed at this time in our history.
But one detects a distinct whiff of mendacity.
Given recent events, bringing the country together and working for the benefit of all Americans would seem the farthest thing from what Biden has planned for however long his health allows him to sit in Lincoln’s Chair.
Consider some of his recent whoppers, beginning with his sudden feigning of horror at mob violence.
Referring to the riot at the Capital that took place on the day that the Electoral College ratified his winning the presidency, he said “and here we stand, just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, and to drive us from this sacred ground.”
This is the same man who remained remarkably restrained during the Spring and Summer of 2020 when really violent mobs went on a rampage throughout the nation following the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and other black men engaged in alleged criminal activity throughout the nation.
Did Biden, now professing such abhorrence of violence, at any point call a press conference and issue an urgent call for calm, to allow the legal process to play out? Did this supposed statesman plead with people not jump to conclusions without all the facts?
Where was his reverence for “the sacred ground” of government when a federal courthouse was set on fire in Portland and entire sections of Seattle were closed off and a police facility overrun?
Did he show any sign of compassion for the business owners who had their live’s work destroyed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs? Or the lives lost?
No, what Biden did was mute his criticism of the riots, issuing weak statements about how violence was wrong and never solved anything, while making sure to not question whether the violence was justified, or whether the police brutality was as prevalent as portrayed by con-artists from Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and most media.
Biden wasn’t interested in examining the nuances of the issue; he’d read the papers and saw on television that the protests were “right and necessary,” and the “American way,” as he said at one point.
And he stood by while his staffers donated bail money to spring the creeps so they could pick up where they left off attacking random strangers and terrorizing neighborhoods.
His running mate Kamala Harris also supported raising bail money for the thugs in Minnesota, at one point praising the chaos, saying of the protests, “they’re not going to stop and they should not and we should not.”
Then there is Biden’s promise to reach out to those 74 million or so American citizens who didn’t voted for him and treat them like like the loyal opposition that they are.
“Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war,” he began. “To all those who did not support us, let me say this: Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart.”
Well, some of us took the measure of his ticker back in the 2012 presidential campaign and found it to be cold, calculating and willing to race-bait in the most despicable fashion.
He told a racially-mixed audience in a racially-mixed town in Virginia that Mitt Romney’s economic policies would “Unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
No doubt you’ve heard the phrase “code word,” from our liberal friends. It’s usually employed as a means to question a Republican’s decency when we take a position on a policy that should be free from racial or ethnic considerations.
People who are for stronger border security aren’t really concerned about safety or American jobs, you understand; they just hate Hispanics. But it wouldn’t be politically wise to admit that bigotry, so Republicans are said to be using coded language. That’s the way it usually works.
Well, Biden dispensed with the code words in his 2012 attack and just came right out and called Mitt Romney—and half the American people that supported him—bigots who wanted to put black people back in chains.
And Harris, herself not above a little race-baiting, all but called Biden a racist when they were both fighting one another for the nomination, bringing up his record of working with segregationists early in his career who opposed school busing.
When asked about it later, she reportedly explained it away by saying it “That’s politics.”
Just politics. Get that?
The most vexing problem in the domestic history of the United States, the nation’s original sin, many have justifiably maintained, is a fit subject for exaggeration because “that’s politics.”
A problem that enslaved an entire race of people; a problem that was ended by the bloodiest war in American history; a problem that continued on well into the 20th Century in the form of segregation and Jim Crowe laws; a problem that, while it lingers today, is not nearly severe enough to justify the presidential candidate of a major American political party to claim that the other party wants to put descendants of slaves back in chains—but many race-hustlers try anyway.
About that awful, humanitarian problem, the person who sits a heartbeat away from the presidency casually explains her criticism of her running mate as just politics? Nice lady.
Call me cynical and paranoid—you wouldn’t be the first—but these aren’t the type of people I find very credible in their calls for civility and unity.
Any lingering doubts about the Biden Administration’s malign intentions toward its political enemies should be dispelled by him failing call out the extremists in his party and the Democrat media calling for the “re-programming” of Trump supporters and 9-11 style commissions to investigate what was, in reality, a few cranks running amuck at the Capital.
By all means, give Biden a chance to make good on his promises to heal the nation, defeat COVID-19 and work for the benefit of all of America’s citizens, not just his supporters. It’s what Americans should do: congratulate the winner and look to the future.
But if you’re a conservative Republican, you’d be wise to watch your back.
