Biden's Philadelphia Speech

President Biden gave a good speech in Philadelphia at Independence Hall on Thursday night in talking about "the soul of our nation."  It was a good speech, but it was not a great one.  

The speech lacked the focus of earlier speeches on liberty and freedom, mainly because it was nearly half an hour long and speeches meant to call attention to democracy under threat are shorter and more to the point.  But then again, you shouldn't expect the Second Coming of the Gettysburg Address from Biden or anyone else.  

A lot of Biden's critics on his left will take issue with his assertion that violence and suppression are not who we are when there's plenty of evidence that such values are who we are and have been for a long time.  Slavery, the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, Bull Connor . . . and back in the late 1960s, black activist Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, who was then known as H. Rap Brown, called for blacks to revolt against the government and declared violence to be "as American as cherry pie."  January 6, 2021 proved al-Amin right.  That al-Amin should have so much in common with the racist Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers is one of the great ironies of contemporary American history.

Biden was at his most effective in this psech, though, when he laid out a dark vision of America in 2022 and rested the blame at the feet of Donald J. Trump, whom he called out by name and declared an existential threat to the American Experiment.  He centered in on Trump supporters and their disregard for the will of the people and the rule of law.  Then President Biden strategically pivoted to the accomplishments of his own administration and the Democratic Congress and their relevance to making America freer and safer in order to set the argument as a choice between democracy and Trumpism, not as a referendum on the Democratic Party.  If there was one misstep Biden made in this speech and in remarks from earlier in the week, it was his somewhat clumsy effort to separate "mainstream" Republicans from Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans, because, quite finally, MAGA Republicans are mainstream.  Also, anti-Trump Republicans aren't really Republicans anymore.  They're either independents or members of the nascent Forward Party.

But with so many pro-Trump election deniers on the ballot in November in so many states for offices like governor or secretary of state, the choice in the 2022 midterms is clear - it's either the Democrats or the Trumpists.  The Forward Party (do you call its members Forwardists?) is still in the process of forming.

Days of Reckoning

It takes something pretty serious to push the COVID-19 story off the news for a week or more.

Protests against the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, like the protest in New York City shown above, have turned violent in many cities, and they've been flaring up in the least likely places, such as the Mormon citadel of Salt Lake City, and protesters against police brutality have included Amish elders and . . . active police officers.

As soon as the violence subsides, COVID-19 should regain the public's attention, but more importantly, the legitimate demonstrations against the Floyd killing will keep the fact of racial injustice in the news as well.  And Donald Trump will have to deal with all of it. I'm sure some Republicans are secretly delighted with the violence and the rioting, as similar unrest got Nixon elected President in 1968, but if Trump thinks he can run on re-election on a platform of law and order, why hasn't he been able to provide either?

I think the picture above is indicative of those Americans who are determined to end racial injustice in the middle of a pandemic. The young woman in the picture above arrived at a demonstration protected by a mask in this social-distancing-unfriendly situation, but the fact that she doffed her mask long enough to make her voice heard and show her face means that she is all too happy to identify herself for the world as a person ready to change America for the better.  Expect young people like her to show up at the polls - or, if they have the opportunity, mail-in ballots - five months from now.

Armed and Dangerous

The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has renewed the debate over guns in America and the need for stricter gun control. Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson shooting, had tried to enlist in the military but was barred, he was asked to leave school, and former classmates of his said he appeared to be "very disturbed." But he still got his hands on a gun.

Gun control has been an issue President Obama has tried to skirt, as he's been preoccupied with so many other issues. Ironically, right-wing demonstrators have shown up at presidential events with guns, paranoiacs have insisted Obama's ready to confiscate their guns, and Obama happily signed a credit card regulation bill to which Oklahoma Republican senator Tom Coburn - just as happily - added an irrelevant amendment to allow carrying firearms in our national parks. Obama may have to tackle the issue head-on and face the fact that we need tougher gun regulations, even though he's done less to initiate curbs on firearms than any President in recent memory.

I'm not optimistic about the regulation of guns in America in the future. Guns are as American as apple pie and stock car racing. And even if we controlled guns, it wouldn't necessarily make America a less violent place. Canada has a gun for every one of its citizens the same as we do, if we can believe Michael Moore, but its firearm homicide rate is much lower. Moore concluded that Americans may be more fearful of each other than Canadians are of each other - and Americans certainly fear their government. The violent rhetoric coming from the American right in the past two years makes me wonder if Jared Lee Loughner could have found a way to discharge his own paranoia without a gun. I doubt there were any weapons at the town hall meeting on the health care bill that I attended in September 2009, but the debate was anything but civil or reasonable. I was a little scared to be there.

Which begs the obvious question: If health care reform could generate such violent, hateful, and incendiary rhetoric, what kind of rhetoric would gun control generate?

The biggest reason I don't see any change in gun laws is twofold. First, violent crime rates tend to be higher in cities than in rural and suburban areas, where more people live and are largely unaffected by gun violence. I can think of only one shooting in my own suburban community in all the time I've lived here - a carjacking. Second, we've had several high-profile shootings in America in the past fifty years. If the shooting of Presidents and pop stars can't get people to wise up about guns and violence, how could a shooting of a U.S. House member do so?

Except - and this is the bit of hope in this Pandora's box - a change in our gun laws and a discussion about violence may yet be possible because of the circumstances surrounding this incident. After all, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords and others in that shopping center most likely wouldn't have happened - and several others would still be alive - if we didn't have the violent rhetoric to inspire the shooting and the easy access to guns to make it possible. Maybe people will think about that for awhile.

The Full Grayson

After delivering a spirited defense of the unemployed from the House floor on Monday, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) found himself on the receiving end of a right-wing media group offering a hundred dollars to anyone who punched him in the nose. Grayson laughed it off - I'm surprised that he didn't complain he was worth so little - and told Ed Schultz on MSNBC that he punches back.

Today, another right-winger counterpunched, and Grayson isn't laughing. Someone called Grayson's office and told one of his staffers that ten people were out to kill him. Grayson expressed regret over how political discourse in this country has devolved - again, to Ed Schultz - and he was visibly upset.

As Schultz noted, this is what many in the American right wing have resorted to - threatening any liberal or progressive politician who forcefully offers facts and opinions they don't like with violence. The right likes to intimidate its opponents. Grayson deserves credit for standing his ground, as he takes these threats very seriously. Now is the time for conservative leaders to try to get their supporters to tone down their rhetoric. This has gone too far. With all the hatred having been generated in the media this past week, I hope this is indeed a turning point, and that the intensity of the attacking and counterattacking stops before . . . someone gets hurt.

Or worse.

Please note that I never mentioned the Republican party in this post.