For that reason, it was almost easy for critics on the right to denounce the speech as scapegoating. That practice is, most commonly, the province of demagogues. Presidents have spoken to the public about impending threats before, but, aside from condemnations of violent crime, they have seldom pointed to their fellow-citizens as the source of the danger. In short, the polarized reaction to Biden’s speech reflects the reasons that he had to give it in the first place. raid at Trump’s Florida home-a search authorized by a federal magistrate judge that nevertheless inspired chatter about bedlam and civil war among right-wing social-media circles and Republican elected officials alike-the address seemed almost predestined to be read in some sectors as alarmist politicking and in others as a grave warning about our current predicament. And that is a threat to this country.”Ĭoming nine weeks before crucial midterm elections, and a month after an F.B.I. Eastland, of Mississippi, and Herman Talmadge, of Georgia, told the nation that “there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. The same Biden who, in 2019, inspired howls for fondly reminiscing about his working relationship with the formerly segregationist senators James O. The speech marked a turn for Biden, whom critics on the left have tended to depict as being mired in a bygone era of civil disagreement and political compromise. (In August, the Republican Party of Texas approved a resolution stating that Biden was “not legitimately elected.”) Nearly everything that has pushed us closer to the emerging political dangers of the past two years flows from that absurdist belief. There are as many complexities swirling around Joe Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech as there are surrounding his Presidency, but the most important among them is the fact that, from the start of his term, he has operated in a context in which more than seventy per cent of Republicans do not believe that he was the legitimate winner in 2020. If Voltaire’s maxim that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities holds true, then, last Thursday night, the President of the United States told the nation that we’ve already checked off that prerequisite for catastrophe.
0 kommentar(er)
