September 1, Philadelphia
A day of reckoning or a day of ‘dialing it, down, slowing it down.’
On Thursday, Sept.1, the “Trump legal team,” requesting a “Special Master” to oversee the ‘reckoning’ of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, asked the plaintiff, the DOJ, to take a pause, to lower “the volume,” to adopt the role of librarian calculating overdue book fines. (1)
Except these documents belonged not to a former President, who stole them, but to the American people.
Who knows where “the rest" are?
Approximately six hours, later in Philadelphia, the President of the United States asked his audience, the American people to act, to not be afraid, to fight for the “soul of America.”
In other words, and in urgent tones, to organize and focus on the notion that America cannot take a pause. America is at war. Albeit, with no thud of distant guns or bombs, but enduring a massive security breach: this is what America is living through and challenged by daily, eclipsing even the President’s salubrious achievements.
The audience had been prepared. The President had used the term — new to poli sci students— “semi-fascists,” to describe the “MAGA right wing of the Republican Party,” the subject of the President’s warning.
We should know them. They’re the ones who body-snatched Steven Scalise and Kevin McCarthy, to name a few.
“I know these people. I’ve worked with them… they are dominated, driven, intimidated by Trump and the MAGA Republicans.”
Tonight, Biden put America on a treadmill of reckoning the hurt and damage to the “soul of America.” America exports political violence. We, as a nation, demonstrate ‘political violence,’ so well, it takes Congressional Hearings after the fact to sanitize the ‘soul of America:’ Iran, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile…
Domestically, our schools are suffering, divided presumably over how to approach our history of political violence. Teachers are cautioned to be ‘optimistic’ about America’s past, to “not make (white) students feel uncomfortable.” Teachers who touch upon America’s racist past can find another school district.
Just as Biden’s sinking popularity had nothing to do with Biden’s success as a Chief Executive, Biden’s rising popularity has nothing to do with Biden’s success as a Chief Executive. He is a Senate leader — perhaps survivor is more apt the qualifier — and he’s ok with that. This is the filter for the majority of his assessments. ‘Getting the job done’ is the goal and direction of his administration. Which is why among his colleagues he is best at influencing from an ‘anti-ideological,’ ‘anti-extremist’ stance.
He doesn’t represent some ‘born again’ electorate. He represents rather a somewhat sorrowful past. Indeed, the President doesn’t dwell on his past business leanings, his past misogyny, his past reluctance at distributing wealth.
To echo his self-assessment, he has ‘evolved.’
He has discovered that to be optimistic is the best path forward.
From what most of America knows well. Which is why his repeating the term “political violence,” during the speech on Thursday night sounded from this perspective, disingenuous.
Shouting the oath that “political violence has no place in a democracy,”… well, Mr. President, run that up Zuckerberg’s flagpole. Or shout through a police ‘bull horn’ in Ferguson. (2)
Is America listening, Mr. President or is America on Facebook, indoors, and with the door double-locked? Those of us who survive violence, political or otherwise, know fear and know repression.
In the end, optimism is a salve. We’re glad that you possess it, Mr. President, if it helps you ‘get the job done.’ But to promise an “end to political violence, Mr. President, that you can promise to ‘fight for.’
Sept. 1 President Biden spoke in front of Independence Hall, fittingly doused in red. A more appropriate venue would have been in front of a suburban laundromat, in full daylight.
September 3
Notes
1-Nicole Wallace, “White House Report with Nicole Wallace,” MSNBC, Sept. Comment by James Trusty, Trump Attorney, quoted in “Judge Keeps Door Open to Arbiter Review of Trump Papers,” NYTimes, Sept. 2
2-The National Guard was deployed June 1, 2020, in preparation for a Black Lives Matter protest in Lafayette Park but was not deployed until mid-afternoon on January 6, 2021.
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