Biden’s alarming speech on ‘MAGA’
Talk of unity and harmony has given way to eliminating a foe.
A number of words can describe President Biden’s most recent speech. ‘Alarming’ and ‘disturbing’, for starters.
Speaking at night, bathed in dark red hues and flanked by soldiers, the President made it easy to invite heinous comparisons. His defenders online emphasise that the rest of the building was flooded with blue and white, but these colours hid off camera. The almost unbelievable shot, broadcast for the twenty-five minute speech, had undoubtedly been signed off.
What was the speech’s staging trying to communicate? It certainly stood at marked odds with Biden’s various moments of boilerplate about unity, hope and progress. Instead, it spoke to the divisiveness of his words and the focus of his speech. To the sheer disdain with which he targetted his enemies, the new pariahs of the United States. He spoke of ‘MAGA forces’, of ‘MAGA Republicans’. He talked of how they ‘thrive on chaos’ and ‘seek carnage and darkness and despair’, spreading ‘fear and lies’ for ‘profit and power’.
Never concretely defined, this amorphous enemy are the new enemies of democracy, posing an existential threat to the United States and its system of government.
Against such forces – who are forever ready to ‘engage in political violence’ – the United States’ democracy must be defended, the extremists confronted. These ‘MAGA forces’, who call for ‘rioting and violence’ and who ‘hold a knife to the throat of our democracy’, must be challenged. They are insects that must be squashed under the boot of, you guessed it, democracy.
Of course, the violence meted out on the streets of the United States for many years has largely been aided and abetted by the left. The other accusations – including the elevation of the 6th January to a totemic event in American history as opposed to a blip of disobedience – are all designed to empower the quashing of political opposition. Disagreement is recast as a crime, and doubts about the efficacy of the modern political system a marker not of genuine concern, but of darkest, foul intent.
By defining his enemies and detailing their crimes in public, Biden has set the scene for future action. Raising the MAGA threat so high, to that of enemy of the state, it will soon be open season on political enemies. It will all be justified by the rhetoric and distorted truths as laid out by Biden in this speech. After all, what is a ‘MAGA Republican’? It is as clearly defined and as malleable a term as ‘witch’ was centuries ago.
It’s easy to speak hyperbolically about politics. But this speech may mark a sinister turn. A public enemy has been hazily identified amid a ghoulish visual backdrop. A fight – an existential one at that – has been sighted. Talk of unity and harmony has given way to eliminating a foe. Was it a green light to civil war?
The stakes have been raised, the scene is set. Given the alleged severity of the threat, could martial law be justified? What if the ‘MAGA Republicans’ try to contest the next presidential election? By this speech’s logic, surely no such vote could go ahead. After all, the White House has already stated publicly that holding a minority opinion is ‘extreme’.
If all this doesn’t make you worried, I don’t know what will.
