Aftermath

What Biden's 'Us vs. Them' speech portends for the future of the republic

(Source: Getty Images)

[Ed. Note: The following essay originally appeared in these pages on Sept. 5, 2022. It is reproduced below as part of our “Best of ‘22” series.

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Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Poitou, France...

It is Labor Day in America. But here at Bonner Private Research headquarters in France, Argentina, England and Laramie, Wyoming, our labors continue uninterrupted.

Last week, it was announced that math scores for 9-year-olds had suffered their biggest drop in 30 years. Two decades’ worth of progress had been erased (presumably by lockdowns… statistically, the children were never at risk from the Covid anyway). White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre illustrated the problem:

“We have created nearly ten thousand million jobs since President Biden took office, which is the fastest job growth in history." 

Ten thousand million is, of course, ten billion, more than there are humans on planet earth. An amazing performance by the Biden Bunch. But now, even arithmetic is infected by claptrap. Activists claim that numeracy, or the way it is taught, is soaked in white supremacy and that the schools need to squeeze it out by aiming for ‘math equity,’ whatever that is.  

Like language and money, math is a way of condensing and transmitting information. Our numbers came to us from the Arabs. Much of the early development work in mathematics and geometry was done in Egypt or Mesopotamia. And today, mathematicians from all over the world add and subtract in the same way; neither race, culture, height, gender, eye color nor any distinguishing birthmarks, matter. It is just as absurd to say that math is racist as to say that language is sexist, because it recognizes different genders, or that money is prejudiced in favor of snow, since so much of it ends up in Switzerland.  

But such is the state of the world in 2022 that you can say any fool thing you want and half the world will agree with you. The other half will think you are a jackass.  

Hee Haw

And so it came to pass, last week also, that Mr. Biden made the headlines. After so much venom directed at Mr. Trump, much of it justified, it was difficult to imagine how any subsequent president might be worse. And in 2020, the genial geriatric, Joe Biden, seemed to offer a safer, more agreeable alternative. 

But there he was, last Thursday, making what might have been the most divisive and uncivilized speech by a US president in history. In short, POTUS went off the deep end, practically declaring war. But not on some hapless foreign nation. Instead, he was declaring war on the half of the nation that didn’t support him.  

Mr. Biden has a long history of plagiarism. He was almost kicked out of Syracuse law school for it. Instead, he was allowed to repeat his first year. And here he was rehearsing almost the exact ‘us vs. them’ themes made famous by dictators and scalawags throughout the centuries:

I will not stand by and watch the most fundamental freedom in this country, the freedom to vote… be taken from you.

We are not powerless in the face of these threats… we are not bystanders… it’s within our power… to stop the assault on… democracy.

The MAGA faction – probably a third of the country – was “a threat… to the very soul of this country,” he claimed. Their “extremism… threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” and constitutes “dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail.”

The last time we heard such “fightin’ words” from a US president they came from the mouth of George W. Bush and led to waterboarding, droning, murdering, perhaps a million dead and 37 million refugees… along with $8 trillion down the drain. These fightin’ words of Joe Biden are likely to be even more costly. For, as we guessed 20 years ago, the words and weapons of the War on Terror are now being trained on “domestic terrorists,” (aka … the people who might defeat Mr. Biden and his bunch in the next election.)

So, throw away the US Constitution! Eight centuries of jurisprudence – going back to the Magna Carta – has been tossed out the window. As in the overseas, boondoggle wars, the ‘terrorist’ label excuses everything. People are arrested with no charges ever filed. They are tortured. Their property is taken away. And they are killed. Even American citizens were held in custody for years… and sometimes murdered. Why not give the same treatment to political enemies at home? The logic of it is irresistible.

Biden recalled the words of a federal judge, who said MAGA Republicans were a “clear and present danger.” This is a loaded phrase, reminding us of the feds’ power to override the First Amendment (free speech) if the threat is imminent. If Trump supporters really do represent a “clear and present danger,” the Biden Bunch has not only the right, but the duty, to lock them up as soon as possible. No trial necessary.

This was all so contrary to the spirit of civilized, consensual American democracy that we had a hard time believing it was true. We had to watch it ourselves; and it was almost more unbelievable than we imagined. There he was, the nation’s chief executive, in front of a red-lit background more appropriate to a “Tales from the Crypt” video than a presidential address, giving a speech that might be compared to Hitler’s famous “Nuremberg Speech” of 1936. Hitler’s target, the Bolsheviks, were a clear and present danger to Germany:

“I cannot come to terms with [bolshevism]… It turns flourishing countrysides into sinister wastes of ruins.”

It was the old ‘us vs. them’:

“…these antagonisms cannot be bridged. Here are really two worlds which do but grow further apart from each other and can never unite.

Bolshevism has attacked the foundations of our whole human order, alike in State and society, the foundations of our conception of civilization, of our faith and of our morals: all alike are at stake. … [bolshevism]…intends to equip its army so that it may with violence, if necessary, open the gate to revolution amongst other peoples…”

Clearly, if the terrorists aren’t stopped…

… then Europe will sink into a sea of blood and mourning....

Fightin’ Words

Hitler’s ‘fightin’ words’ were greeted with wide approval and led to WWII. So too, after Biden’s call to action, many educated adults, who should have known better, immediately enlisted: 

“One of the most important [speeches] I’ve seen a president give,” said Hillary Clinton. “Biden’s core claim about the foundational threat posed by Trump and MAGA is undeniably correct,” wrote Greg Sargent. And here’s Dean Obeidallah: “It's long past time that MAGA be designated a domestic terrorist group. Period.”

Terrorists? MAGA forces have not set fire to the Capitol. They have not shot dead any archdukes…stormed no Bastilles nor put any heads on pikes. They have burned no shops… destroyed no newspaper offices… and hung no Jews, no communists, no homosexuals, no blacks, no Mexicans, no Washington Post columnists, no cross-dressers or self-mutilators, no virtue-signaling celebrities, no referees, no knee-taking sports heroes, no squeegee kids, no rap stars, no Green Energy hustlers, no Fed governors, no senators, no Baltimore mayors, no prison guards, no BATF agents, no IRS agents, no FBI agents, no TSA agents, no Indian agents, no PR agents and no travel agents. Neither Hillary Clinton nor her insufferable daughter have been molested. Hunter Biden is still a free man. And Paul Krugman still gets a check from the New York Times. All things considered, the MAGA aficionados have showed remarkable restraint… or incompetence.  

Have they set up secret training camps in the Ozarks? Have they had secret meetings with key generals, admirals, CIA chiefs and Homeland Security bureaucrats? Have they assassinated key Biden supporters, politicians, and traitors to their cause? While lone wolf nut-cases howl at the moon and gun down people from time to time, not a single murder can be fairly attributed to organized Trump followers. Instead, the MAGA enthusiasts are typically middle aged, law-abiding, and simpleminded. They are not revolutionaries. And Donald Trump himself may be able to rouse the rabble; but organize a genuine threat to the republic? Not likely.

Even their unlawful entry (?) into the US Capitol was hardly an attack on democracy; every one of the trespassers thought he was there to fulfill the promise of the Constitution, not destroy it. They may not be terribly bright, but if MAGA Republicans are terrorists… they are the dullest and least threatening bomb throwers in world history.    

Extremists of the world, unite!

But it was left to the redoubtable Karine Jean-Pierre to make sense of it. Who are these extremists? She explained:     

“When you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.”

Again, it was math that tripped her up.  The majority may be as slim as 51%, with the swing vote swaying one way or another like a ‘for sale’ sign in a hurricane. That means that 49% – or about 125 million American adults, including us, and millions of people who voted for Biden but who are now fed up with his policies – are all ‘extremists.’ 

The feds are said to be naming Russia as a ‘terrorist state.’ Next, it will be Florida.

Regards,

Bill Bonner