This has been a fight between big tech, the media, the global elite and ordinary Americans. Round one has been won by the former and all talk of unity is just that, talk. Like everything Biden does the speech was written for him to deliver. The real Biden is rarely seen and it is not impressive.
What worries me most though is the naked one sidedness and determination of the media and tech, to control every aspect the narrative. Democrats seem obsessed with ensuring that Americans will henceforth, live within a narrow code of behaviour and speech, similar to the model that has been tried over the last 20 years in Europe.
The thing is though, America is not Europe. I am not sure that Americans can remain half-slave and half free. Americans must eventually become all one or all the other. There is no middle ground for an American between death and life.
This has been a fight between big tech, the media, the global elite and ordinary Americans.
So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts, is what you’re saying. Yeah, that sounds about right. I swear, conservatives are the worst at coming up with insults. First it was “social justice warrior,” the most badass-sounding pejorative imaginable. Now it’s all whining about “elites.” If your enemies are the elite, what does that make you? The mediocre? The underachievers? The jealous losers?
I mean, that does seem to be the size of it. Conservatives used to have one saving grace: they valued competence and results. They worshipped ruthless big business to a sociopathic extent, but at least big businesses are per definition success stories, organisations that can be assumed to be doing at least something right. Now they have rebranded themselves as the champions of people who have nothing to offer the world but their inflated self-importance. Oh, the critical-theory-wielding hyperactivists on the left certainly have no useful skills beyond a way with words, but the new ideal on the right seems to be to not even have that much.
Democrats seem obsessed with ensuring that Americans will henceforth, live within a narrow code of behaviour and speech, similar to the model that has been tried over the last 20 years in Europe.
You mean, civilised behaviour? Yeah, I agree that Democrats have an uphill battle with that one.
Well, how would you describe those who invaded the Capitol at Trump’s encouragement? Patriots? The description seems fine for groups like the Proud Boys.
In this country we have been treated to the specatcle of the Eton and Oxbridge brigade railing against “elites”. Its pure nonsense.
“Well, how would you describe those who invaded the Capitol at Trump’s encouragement? Patriots?” No better or worse than those who burnt Portland. The Eton and Oxbridge brigade are indeed elitists -they hate Boris Johnson for siding with the working class against chaps like you. Obviously he did it to win an election, but I don’t care.
I am talking about allowing people to make decisions that are properly within the scope of a private individual’s authority. A classic example would be the Middle Class “deserting” the cities for the suburbs and thereby “shirking” its financial responsibility to the city. It’s not illegal or immoral to choose a place to live. But when people acquired the ability to make that choice, they do so overwhelmingly in a way that particular interest groups found destructive to a particular “collective vision”. Those interest groups want to recapture the power to dragoon people into the service of their agendas. Lack of choice leads to lack of opportunity, lack of investment, poverty and hopelessness.
However, all is not lost to the socialist. It occurs to me that the Mars One project is available for disaffected Socialists looking for their utopia. And look here. Mars is already nothing but dirt and rock and poisonous air so it’s already 80% along the way to becoming a Socialist Paradise. They don’t call it the Red Planet for nothing
They would immediately start a war with earth over no reason. Socialists love war. Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs on the Middle East in the last year of his presidency. That is 3 bombs every hour for a whole year long.
As matter of fact I do, socialists where united workers. Nowadays socialism does not exist anymore. It is become just another frase for left wing politics. People who identify as socialist nowadays probably never worked a normal days job their entire lives, they most probably despise people who do, and call them names like ‘deplorables’.
I always thought they just wanted handouts and were for taxing the hardworking people heavily under the doctrine of socialism to finance their schemes of we all own everything. In practice it was nothing of the sort and proper business plumetted in the expectation that the state would do everything for you.
Your starter for 10, In 1941 (clue there) which “socialist” country launched “Operation Barbarossa” invading a neighbouring country causing 20,000,000 dead, amongst other things.
and don’t forget to mention the bombs dropped by Pres Dubya with his war in pursuit of non-existent WMD. A dumb pointless war, it turns out.
“In 2004, the 9/11 Commission said there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda.[68] No stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found in Iraq.”
“Civilised behaviour”, right, like the burning down of cities and mass violence and destruction they encouraged, condoned, or excused for months on end last year.
The burning and rioting continues, setting fires and smashing doors and windows Antifa and BLM have barely stopped to draw breath. From Seattle and Portland: “We don’t want Biden. We want revenge for police murders, imperialist wars, and fascist massacres,” read a banner they marched under, while others carried a banner saying, “We are not governable,” which was dotted with anarchy symbols.
Anarchy is usually a communist ploy to destroy countries then take over by force. America is too strong to let that happen. Shame on the democrats for idly standing by.
So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts, is what you’re saying. Wow, really? And then you accuse conservatives of insulting people? You just took a swipe at most of the country, the people not in media or tech, the people who pay the bills.
‘So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners…’
They are the people that brought you Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, the financial crash, the looting and burning of numerous American cities last year, the suppression of Occupy (an uprising with a legitimate cause) etc. Trump and his supporters are p***y cats compared to the damage your lot did.
I am not sure I would count the episodes that have plagued the West Coast recently (and thoroughly championed by the Democrats) as civilised behaviour. It seems to me that the USA has sunk into a very UNcivil war.
Quite honestly as a Britain I am really surprised that America could stoop to this behaviour. I always believed they were friendly honest people and I still believe most of them are but what I have seen lately really gives me grave doubts about the country.
Well said…. Conservatives want what they want and care little how they get it, see for example the 2016 election “win” with vats of help by Vladimir Putin, the disregard for their own rules when installing Amy Coney Barrett in an election year, their support of the baseless Trump claim that the election was fraudulent, rugged, stolen. And as you point out, Mr. Bjorkman, conservatives support incompetence in their leaders, the more incompetent the better. There is genius in the favoring of incompetence in GOP candidates as the cagey conservatives can then direct the elected wind bag “leaders” to fill the coffers of the wealthy through lucrative government contracts (eg. Kushner’s cozy deals to direct our national stockpiles of medical supplies to corporations who sold them at profit to desperate hospitals during a pandemic and then Kushner justified the deal by saying the stockpiles didn’t belong to the American people anyway). Conservatives are about one idea: maintaining their status quo and all others be damned.
Typical of the far left to accuse others of the very crimes they commit themselves. The Russia hoax was always that, and was eventually disproved. On the other hand, anyone who listened to even 5 hours of testimony from ordinary Americans in the hearings in the disputed states would realize that the fraud was pervasive and systemic. Something is really wrong with the Democrats. (That is not to say that all is sweetness and light in the Republican party.)
To complain of Kushner’s deals is fair enough, but a bit rich coming from supporters of Hunter Biden’s father. And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Good ole Uncle Joe is on tape admitting he extorted the Ukraine authorities.
America is dying, and it’s appropriate that the new President is a living corpse.
I did listen to some of the testimony claiming to have witnessed voting irregularities. I was not impressed with the witnesses’ presentations. In particular I found Rudy’s witness unstable and confused though she was loud!
As to my citing Kushner’s private deal making with publicly owned supplies, it has nothing to do with whether or not I support Biden, who, as far as I have ascertained, is not besmirched by his son’s failures or successes.
Citing old saws such as the apple not falling from the tree doesn’t really mesh with the conservative mantra of personal responsibility… I assume from your posting that you are a conservative. The father and son are separate people and so each should have all the reward and all the blame his actions merit. Fred Trump, for example, is neither elevated nor leveled by his sons’ failures or successes. Donald Trump, likewise, is neither elevated nor leveled by his father.
Just as I would never assume that your positions have anything to do with your father.
As to the claim of Biden admitting extortion: I have encountered no evidence, in print or on tape, where Biden admitted extorting any funds from the Ukraine. He did say he pressured Ukraine to remove a corrupt government official. Biden’s claim is supported by Marie Yovanovich’s testimony. As Ms Yovanovich has not been indicted for perjury during that testimony, I have to conclude Biden’s claim that he pressured for the removal of the Ukrainian official because of proven corruption is correct. Please provide your evidence to the claim you make about extortion.
As to the decline of America and the mind of its president: Neither is America dying nor is President Biden’s mental faculty moribund.
America is proving resilient in the face of a perilous virus and a consequent economic downturn. Yes, the death numbers are too high; yes the economy is suffering. However, President is pushing 100,000,000 vaccines in 100 days and an economic plan to revitalize the economy.
Biden’s thinking is sharp: He was clear about his reasons for signing each of the 17 documents quite late yesterday …. after a very full day of inaugural activities. His program of 100,000,000 vaccinations in 100 days recognizes the fact that controlling the virus is the foundation to eliminating the economic distress plaguing millions and the psychological distress that comes from listening to rising death tolls and rising unemployment claims.
I trust your report of America’s dying and Biden’s mental faculties being moribund are simply Conservative disappointment at election results.
Unfortunately The Republican party has Status Quo of Mitch McConnell,74.5M Americans voted for Trump they could/Will desert Republicans for a Third Party…
Still clinging to the Putin talking point and the claim that ACB is somehow illegitimate. Your phony pretense about filling one’s coffers leaves out not just Joe and his relatives, but also Hillary who banked on the Clinton name in trading influence for millions.
And as you point out, Mr. Bjorkman, conservatives support incompetence in their leaders, the more incompetent the better. that must explain the election of Biden, a man who spent nearly 50 years at the public trough with nothing of substance to show for it beyond the crime bill. Also explains his VP, who the party summarily rejected during the primaries. Harris did not muster a single delegate, and her campaign was essentially ended during a debate over her time as AG in California which was mostly spent warehousing black men.
Is not networking, referencing, name dropping, etc. just coat tailing or banking in connections by another name? If so then everyone who has ever applied for a job and submitted a CV, resume, letters of reference or who has landed a job as the result of knowing someone with connections or being related to someone (such as Trump) is guilty of what appears to be banking-on or riding on the coat tails of others. No one is 100% self made. We all are indebted to one degree or another to those who came before us. So Hillary Clinton got a leg up because she’s married to Bill, but in the end, that connection has stained her image.
There is nothing inherently bad in public service as long as you do serve the public’s interest while in that position. Those who compare people serving the public in service jobs as to pigs feeding at a trough are including our military members, teachers, policemen, firemen in that group of pigs at the trough. I get the impression, Mr Lekas, that you are envious and suspicious of those who have service jobs. If so, perhaps you should get one of those jobs (especially as a soldier, a teacher, policeman, or firefighter). If you do, you may find yourself working very hard for very little food at the trough. as Lindsay Graham found out at the airport, even big pigs feeding at the trough for a very long time have to take a lot of abuse to stay at the trough.
I see you just labelled over half of America ‘worthless incompetent louts’. Which has effectively been the strategy from the blue church for the past many years. I see the anointed have learnt very little from the past 4 years then… The conditions that allowed a ‘Trump’ to come into existence are still here.. and the hollow & empty Biden spectacle will do very little to change that. How many more times must the progressive echo chamber come crashing down before the lesson is learnt?
if you want to hang onto that as some kind of solution then knock yourself out. Just don’t be surprised when she also turns out to represent the interests of the moneyed elite first and foremost and the growing underlying resentment and breakdown of social cohesion soon enough produces another ‘Trump’ that make the first one look positively benign by comparison.
And no doubt when even that happens the progressive echo chamber will still fail to learn any lessons whatsoever.
So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts, is what you’re saying.
When I came across some poster sneering at the uneducated the other day, it occurred to me that almost all wars, atrocities and large-scale human rights abuses in history have been initiated by people who belonged to the most educated stratum in their society and of their day. The “elite”, in other words.
The “worthless”, as you rather disturbingly call them, have done little wrong, comparatively.
Conservatives used to have one saving grace: they valued competence and results. They worshipped ruthless big business to a sociopathic extent
Does it never occur to you that your sneering tone, undisguised contempt and use of sweeping generalisations don’t do your arguments any favours? The way you come across, I would honestly prefer to be governed by the “worthless” than by you and the rest of your self-appointed priest class.
You mean, civilised behaviour?
I genuinely gasped and then laughed out loud at that. It seems people define “civilised behaviour” in different ways. You seem to consider civilised behaviour to be writing off people as “worthless” and hurling vicious insults at whole swathes of the population. Yours is the “civilised behaviour” of the priests of the Catholic Inquisition, medieval noblemen, enforcers of the British Empire and even, dare I say it, the Nazis.
What’s the best way to punish someone if you can’t punch them? Make them angry. I’m sure this Bjorkman is chuckling away as he reads these replies. He’s the kid who pokes a stick at a dog in a cage. Best to ignore him, which I’m sure everyone in his life does.
I see the Elites as a highly privileged cohort with power and privilege and often wealth not necessarily justified by competence or results, whose preoccupation is maintaining that status quo. I certainly don’t have a problem with status that is earned, though not huge disparities for little contribution. I do have a problem with the unholy alliance between the left and wealthy global corporates and their marriage of convenience with little in common other than the ability to utilise each other for their own benefit, promoting the value of identity above competence. I find it fascinating the way the elites are so fond of a supposedly egalitarian movement who don’t seem to realize the contradiction and see why they find it useful to act as allies. I suspect it will last until such times it poses a threat to their privilege, in the meantime it’s an amusing distraction to the detriment of the rest.
Talking as if one side represents the whole people is itself a classic rhetorical trick. You mean some, under a half, of ordinary Americans. Somewhat more ‘OAs’ voted for Biden…
Next, the most important thing Joe could do is say that he was going to be president for everybody,, including those who didn’t support him. That was the best thing he did. Let’s see how that pans out. That will be the measure of the man in this fractured nation, how he deals with those who disagree with him on so much. Was his speech just talk, or will there be a real effort?
Next is Kamala. I hope Biden is able to finish out his term because that lady scares me. First off, she has no charm at all. Biden has charm, he’s likable, like he has no malice, but she just seems angry and full of attitude. When I saw her debate performance with Pence it made it clear to me that she is a light weight. She seemed in way over her depth in that debate. That coupled with the unlikable factor, and the sort of mean-girl graceless attitude (sort of like Michelle Obama with that thin veneer of niceness), I hope Biden’s geriatric brain holds up and that the corrupt money deals that he did through his son Hunter don’t mean that he will be exiting soon.
Working for everybody including those who didn’t vote for him (?!) That is one of the all time political cliches ““ up there alongside “now is the time for national unity” and “we must all pull together as one nation”. Empty sentiment. Forget unity and reconciliation ““ white supremacy will be the prime target.
Yes, Obama was ridiculously overrated as an orator. I think he made one lively speech in his 2008 campaign. That impressed the pundits and they stubbornly stayed impressed in spite of subsequent lack lustre performances.
Well if there is one thing that liberals do it is to prop up their own. Even the most mediocre performance is lauded. I am going to give Biden a chance though. I hope that some things will change. I think they almost have to. America is really in a bad place right now.
Kamala Harris is actually a legitimate horrible person. She was infamous for her abuses even back when she was a California prosecutor. Harris’s presidential campaign was destroyed in a couple of minutes by Tulsi Gabbard bringing up her record. Shortly afterward, the DNC did their best to destroy Gabbard including, wait for it… “SHE WAS A RUSSIAN ASSET!.” Since then Harris has had one of those traditional American political reinventions. I’m sure you know the type. “Hmm, that person sounds like a saint but I still have not heard anything about anything they have actually done.”
‘When the author said this: “Barack Obama’s lavish oratorical gifts” he lost me.’
Exactly. Obama was one of the most overrated human beings of all time. He looked good and sounded good – as long as you didn’t pay any attention to the actual words or judge his actions relative to those words. He spoke pure liberal while acting fascist e.g. smashing Occupy in a heartbeat and allowing 5.1 million families to be lose their homes between 2009 and 2012.
I may despise Harris but I think you go to far on the sleeping around. The man in question is Willie Brown. Understand that when I tell you Willie Brown is the Jeremy Epstein of California politics, I am neither exaggerating or joking. The man is a massive creep though few people have heard of him. I do not know if she slept with him but she almost certainly had to put up with some disgusting behavior before she was “allowed” into California politics.
It’s been made pretty clear that she and Willie were an item, and never once have you heard her complain about it. Harris later went on to build a record as AG most notable for warehousing scores of black men on petty drug charges, periodically blocking evidence that would exonerate them. Tulsi Gabbard took her down in one of the debates. Dems themselves summarily rejected Harris who did not muster one single delegate in the primaries. She was picked for her skin color and nothing else.
I suspect both Biden’s and Harris’s limitations will become crashingly obvious very quickly. Unfortunately, they’ll get a free pass from the MSM and liberals more generally because the ‘Democrats good, Republicans bad’ will be a constant refrain going forward. Although, of course the mid terms may bring an opportunity to change the Senate mathematics and therefore the necessary scrutiny.
Obama’s skill was in his delivery. It was the content that was often lacking. I remember, on hearing the speech he gave after he won the election, thinking, wow. I was disappointed after reading its transcript. And yet, it’s been included in a book of great speeches of history. It pales into insignificance next to the others in the book.
7882 fremic
3 years ago
A beautifully written article, and I really loved the vocabulary with the meanings attached, how fun to see a speech dissected like that.
In the Deep South of the old days the cliche of a Politician making his stump speech was that he was ‘For Motherhood, and Against the Bole Weevil’. Just a shorter version of Biden’s speech really.
Except that this incumbent happens to be against motherhood, certainly if this is within what used to be called “an ordinary stable marriage”. I do not know his stance on the Bole Weevil…
think Southern tofu – they take on the flavor whatever else is involved. It’s why they are often paired with red eye gravy and work well with many breakfast foods. A little butter and salt are always involved, slow cooked is better than instant. They’re not for everyone but what is. I like them, especially with a couple of over easy eggs, mixing the two together and perhaps dropping in some bacon pieces for added crunch. Now, I’ve made myself hungry so thanks. 🙂
It feeds on cotton. It ravaged crops in the 1940’s.
Colin Reeves
3 years ago
Unity hasn’t lasted long. The latest press release states that Biden “will sign an Executive Order beginning the work of embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions,”
Yep, the phantom menace of systemic racism will be front and centre.
The Order will “define equity as the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities, such asBlack, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; LGBTQ+ persons;people with disabilities; religious minorities, persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
All federal agencies must “undertake a baseline review of the state of equity within their agency and deliver an action plan within 200 days to address unequal barriers to opportunity in agency policies and programs.”
Harris explained what equity is in one of her election ads. It’s making sure “everyone ends up in the same place.” (Except pampered Senators and Congress’persons’, naturally.) A dystopian dream. Ask anyone from a former communist state.
Biden will also reverse Trump’s executive order that banned federal agencies, contractors, subcontractors, and grantees from instructing their employees to follow the ideology of critical theory–impicit bias training etc.
Some unity. Critical theory is about dividing people to cause chaos. All in the interests of the Revolution, of course. The CCP must be laughing their heads off.
Biden has problems on the left as well as the right. According to one report the former aren’t waiting either: straight after the speech the Antifa/BLM mob were attacking the Democrat office in Portland (where else?) chanting “We don’t want Biden, we want revenge”. Who’s for critical race theory, or unconscious bias training?
The country is more than 50 years removed from “colored only” anything and Dems would have us believe that Jim Crow is still alive, the same Jim Crow their party enacted. Today, a minority is more likely to benefit from that status than face discrimination. Read: Harris, Kamala. Were she white, she might not even be a Senator any more what with her AG track record of warehousing black men on minor drug offenses.
This discussion will still be going to be going on 50 years from now. Because there is power and money to be had in the grievance industry, and because there is no interest in exploring any reasons why one group persistently lags behind the others or how policy helps to perpetuate that.
also, I’ve read that Biden’s economic policy team has signalled it will be the first administration ever to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender, climate change, rather than indicators like GDP and deficit ratios. Further, he has pledged support for small businesses hit hard by Covid but only if they are run by people of colour, women, or LGBT. (white men need not apply) yes, the Chinese must be laughing – and none of this sounds unifying, either
Martin Luther King would probably be horrified that the Democrats have shot if in the opposite direction to that for which he aimed. They seem to want apartheid as imagined by Verwoerd. On top of that we see private jetsetters lecturing ordinary Americans as they flit around the world promoting ever more taxes which the elite evade. On top of this, in their effort to atomise society by making it a multitude of mistrustful cultures, they open borders and undercut American workers pay. I suspect next time the response of the Right will not be so diplomatic and kindly as Donald Trump (and I really mean that unironically).
Yes, his little trope about unity and ‘values’ then at the end – he just couldn’t help himself. I see no unity on the horizon at all – just demands for submission. I was not a Trump fan, and still not really, but I can see wholeheartedly what the conservatives (and I disagree with them politically on many things) mean when they talk about the looney authoritarian left that is obsessed with purging wrongthink from America. For that alone I am far more pro Trump than pro Biden. The far left scare me far more than the Proud Boys because the far left are given a free pass under the cover of ‘righteousness’ which the Proud Boys are definitely not.
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
So basically he was saying “We’ll pull through this providing all you Trumpers behave yourselves and come over the fence to our way of thinking” Thank the good Lord we don’t have politicians making vomit inducing speeches at ceremonies like this in the UK.
An extraordinary statement. To suggest that politicians in the UK do not make similar entreaties to attempt to persuade others to accept their way of thinking is far from reality. It is the very nature of politics regardless of where that may be. It may be you are not personally engaged by what Biden said but UK politicians are equally culpable.
The alleged behaviour of UK politicians does not make Biden less (or more) culpable. Their behaviour does not excuse Biden. Similarly a murderer is not absolved because there are other murderers.
Not being particularly interested in the speech of this corrupt, sock puppet doe not make one a MAGA hat wearer, but I know that for many of you it is difficult to let go of TRUMP!.
Clearly you have never read anything that I have posted. You project your silly fantasies onto others. I am quite sure that you know, and have read, much more about the things that you mentioned than I do-keep digging, someone will come along and help you out of your hole…
Those of us who were lucky enough to miss the speech, were then treated to a video from CNN showing a line of lights heading up to the Washngton Monument and just in case we thought they were just lights, we were informed that they were Biden’s arms stretching out to embrace the country. That was over the top hysteria of course i am far more frightened of what is going on now then I ever was with Trump. Now that the Dems are in power (and I have been one) they are unleashing their pent up desire to curtail civil liberties in every way they can with more 911 commissions, more people thrown off social media and a more subservient media that questions nothing.
The worst part is that my progressive friends don’t care and worse, don’t care to know..
neilandross
3 years ago
Surprising that the writer does not acknowledge that the speech was the product of a team of scriptwriters working on it for over a month with additions made after the Capitol riots. How much of it did the writer think Biden wrote himself would have been a much more interesting article!
On the day of the inauguration – they led Biden into a room to sign Executive Orders. Many press people were in the room. Biden mumbled through a dense mask. What he said was unintelligible and after he signed one order, his handlers quickly rushed people out of the room. They had to have realized that Biden really didn’t know what he was signing – he could barely read the first order. Scary days ahead folks. Just keep moving on folks, please leave the room, while Biden does what we are instructing him to do.
Had that been Trump…there were have been numerous people around him while he signed. They’d be jocularity, hand shaking and then some pictures taken.
“Lies told for power and profit” was certainly a jab. It was also a glaring lack of self-awareness and once more, flies right over the head of the alleged public watchdog the media is supposed to be. It will be interesting to see how long the hagiography-style coverage continues.
Since Trump did not take his salary and left office poorer than he started, and was financed almost exclusively by his own wealth and very small donations, it would appear that at least the “for profit” part of this man’s comment is wrong.
David Platzer
3 years ago
I didn’t watch at the time but I see there is one sizeable portion of his “fellow Americans” are not invited to O’Biden’s unity fest, the “White Supremacists” which means those dissenters who voted for Trump — who appears to have attracted large numbers of blacks and Latinos perhaps because until the virus, his policies gave more of these groups jobs than previous presidents did including the fraudulent Obama whose sole talent was making a fortune for himself. It seems too that one of the first things that the new president, once known as a IRA fan, did on entering the Oval Offlice was to take the Churchill bust out and put into storage. I rather doubt that Kamala Harris will restore it when she gives the old white man a shove. One suspects the tyrants of Iran and Communist China are gloating. Meanwhile, I suggest the British Embassy in Washington send over to the White House a bust of Wellington and an abridged edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
agsmith.uk
3 years ago
It has been only four years since the American people voted for Donald Trump, amidst an avalanche of cries from the opposition that his win was illegitimate. His policies are now being reversed at speed, which will only further alienate his constituency. His opponents were constantly ‘looking down their noses’ at his style, whilst fully aware that he was not a ‘proper’ politician and did not use the same well worn phrasebook. The attacks on him were personal, which is why he responded in kind. In this recent election he got more votes than President Obama ever received. I give ‘Sleepy Joe” one term unless he wakes up as to why this was, because those ‘mail-in’ votes are unlikely to be there next time!
President Trump is probably the first president in living memory to leave office poorer than when he took office. No one will be able to say the same about the crook Biden. He also started no Wars, again a first in 40+ years. The same wont be said about Biden.
Retail voting doesn’t count, period. The donor class picks the POTUS. That was the bottom line illegitimacy of this last election, and all previous. And even in the exception when we actually have a “democratic” free & fair” etc, election and populism actually wins, it loses, to wit Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate, etc.. And even then he’s a fake populist actually working to deregulate and tax-cut for the rich and toady to Israel.
Charles Rense
3 years ago
If this presidency is boring, I think that will be an improvement.
Let’s hope the endless wars don’t start back up. A lot of money gets passed around via the military industrial complex. Hunter Biden was able to get the Biden family a lot of money through US money bound for Ukraine to “protect” it from Russia. War is something a lot of Republican and Democrat politicians love That and the US being the chief meddler of the world as if we’re the “good people” qualified to make the world a better place, and tell everyone else what they should be doing. That works well as long as we’re spreading money around. That can be delivered in a very boring way, unless your on the other end of the bombs, bullets’, psy-ops, and negative media campaign.
Trump’s (American populism) supporters have had a taste of what the ruling class normally reserves for countries it wants to destabilize, so I’ll be glad if it’s turned away from American citizens again, even if there is endless money printing, and other nation meddling. I think everyone is ready to settle in to a more comfortable culture where our children’s futures have been sold to China, and digital left-wing authoritarians tell us what is true, that 4 legs are good and 2 are bad, and not to listen to fake news types who say any different.
Go to YouTube and watch “Tucker: Democratic Party is planning a war on half of America” he has a lot of clips of what democrats are saying about Trump supporters (or gulags). The correct conclusion is, the war agains the American people is only just started, and there will be blood.
If I’d decided to boil a frog, I’d do it slowly, so the frog didn’t notice
Penelope Newsome
3 years ago
Yes, a sick making speech as someone below has said. And nothing to do with what the reality of Democrat rule will mean . Wake up to reality .
Andrew Baldwin
3 years ago
Lincoln wrote the most beautiful presidential inaugural addresses ever. They will almost certainly never be equaled and a speechwriter should really stay away from their phrasing, rather than try to echo them. “We are not enemies, but friends” was from the closing words of Lincoln’s first inaugural, introduced by the phrase “I am loath to close.” Everyone should go and read the whole paragraph that follows then compare its haunting phrases and generous spirit with the paint-by-numbers rhetoric of Biden’s speech. By the way, “enemies” and “friends” are antonyms, but “adversaries” and “neighbours” aren’t. The word Biden’s speechwriter was looking for was “allies”. The “hallowed ground” reference, which Sam seemed to like, was a hugely inappropriate Lincoln theft. The Gettysburg Address spoke of a battlefield where over seven thousand people were shot to death on both sides. Biden was talking about a riot where one unarmed woman, a veteran, was shot to death as she tried to enter the Capitol through a broken window. To draw an equivalence between the two is simply obscene. as if America were in a new civil war. This isn’t healing rhetoric; it’s highly inflammatory. It shows that Biden is still a hugely divisive politician, not at all a unifier. He is still the Biden who talked about Republicans putting blacks back in chains, rather strange rhetoric, by the way, to describe members of the party of the Great Emancipator. Mostly, Biden’s medical team seems to have done wonders in holding the demented old man together for the speech. It did fall apart though when Biden said: “”We must end this uncivil war, red against blue, rural versus Erland…”, when “urban” was intended. Which Erland was Biden thinking of? Or was this, as some closed captions indicated, just as close as Biden could come with his slurred speech to saying “Ireland”? Remove the gaffe and the phrase still disappoints. “This uncivil war” again implies that the United States is already in a new civil war. This is again inflammatory rhetoric. And since Sam wants to talk about style, why didn’t Biden’s speechwriter go with “rural against urban”? Whoever was responsible went for elegant variation. As Fowler said: “it is the second rate writers that are chiefly open to the allurements of elegant variation.”
Obama’s “lavish oratory”? Really? All I ever heard was various versions of “Together we must face this challenge. And we must face this challenge together”.
Exactly, while enabling the disasters of Libya and Yemen (among others) and allowing the banks to throw 5.1 million families out of their homes during his first term. What a piece of garbage he was and is.
He (Obomber)Also Pliagarised ”Bob the Builder” ‘We Can do it’ Joe O’biden pliagarised another Globalist fool Neil Kinnock
Kiran Grimm
3 years ago
Perhaps the new administration needs to update that tiresome old incription on the Lincoln memorial with a few words which are, like, y’know, relevant:
This Nation under whichever God is, like, y’know, cool for you ““ Shall have a new birth of wokeness ““ Government of Celebrities by Celebrities for Celebrities’ (and their pet causes) Shall not perish from the the Earth ““ until such time as Celebrities declare themselves “betrayed!”
Jon Mcgill
3 years ago
Nice to read some grammatically informed critique but what else would we expect from Joe Biden ( and I object to the use of the Trumpist “Sleepy Joe”-unoriginal! America is sentimental and corny. They can still say things like “the world looks at us and marvels” (Tom Hanks) Yes, the world does react but mostly in shock and dismay at a nation that still peddles the “exceptionalism” nonsense. The US is in trouble, deep, murky and puzzling to many in siders, so they give us what Joe gave us.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Somewhat hilariously, Antifa/BLM smashed up the DNC HQ in Portland last night, which is the first time they have done anything useful, apart from attacking the CNN building in Atlanta last summer.
johnmckenna538
3 years ago
A Liberal leftist quoting Saint Augustine !! Hillarious you couldn’t make it up , he either hasn’t read and or has little knowledge of the nature and beliefs of the man he is quoting or he is simply disingenuous and very selective ..
Warren Alexander
3 years ago
Nothing quite like the inauguration of a new leader to bring out the platitudes.
An excellent synopsis. However, as you say it was far too long and full of platitudes. Marcus Tullius Cicero would not have been impressed.
G Matthews
3 years ago
Why would you be pleased to see someone who 1. Lied about his college qualifications, said he was top of class when in fact near bottom 2. Seduced saintly Jill away from her marriage, shagging behind her husband’s back 3. Said bussing would lead to the racial jungle, 4. Plagiarised Neil Kinnock’s speeches (!) 5. Eulogised Robert Byrd, his mentor and ex-KKK Grand Kleagle 6. His brother, son and daughter form a corruption family grafting off his position his whole career 7. He has been a politician his entire adult life, never had a job, 8. Son is a crack addict, sex addict, dishonorable navy reserve discharge who corruptly profited from father’s role in both Ukraine and China to earn millions plus have people leave him 2.8k diamonds on his hotel pillow as gifts. The guy is disgusting.
Agreed with everything you say, a very ‘nasty piece of work’ indeed. Was he also a draft dodger? I can find nothing on this.
Neil Mcalester
3 years ago
Genuinely interesting although as with most of them, I’m sure Biden didn’t write a word of it.
Pete Kreff
3 years ago
While fully aware that talk is cheap, I was quite impressed by Biden’s speech.
There was one thing I found a bit odd, though. Given the lack of vocal support for the USA, its history and its traditions from some Democrats and people on the left of US politics – I have seen little Democrat Party opposition to Critical Race Theory or the 1619 (?) project and the concomitant beliefs that the USA is a “white supremacist project” and all that stuff – it was slightly disconcerting to hear Biden evoking the great American traditions and myths like “We’ve never, ever failed when we’ve acted together” and similar guff.
As far as I know, there was also very little objection to Biden’s words from the more vocal social justice crowd either, though if exactly the same myths had been rolled out by Trump he would have been accused of promoting white supremacy.
I was heartened to read about a protest and petty vandalism by a few hundred American communists and Antifa in Seattle, though. At least some people are true to their principles.
I agree with most of that – apart from being impressed with Joe’s speech. I wasn’t (see below). For me the highlight was Lady GaGa: her rendition of the US national anthem was surprisingly good. Conversely, songs by Jennifer Lopez and some C&W bloke were truly dreadful, as was an over-long piece by a ‘poet laureate’. The rest was largely wallpaper.
I’m as intrigued and optimistic as anyone as to whether this superannuated leopard can finally change his spots.
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
In terms of everyday life, ex-presidents have just vanished into obscurity – maybe Carter had a life as an ex-P. Is Trump going to vanish? If Trump does not vanish, Biden’s role will change.
Ben Ball
3 years ago
This will probably be remembered as “The Uncivil War” speech. He hit a home run there.
This speech is already being forgotten, except where it is being dissected-such as here, or praised in the sycophantic “press”.
J J
3 years ago
I don’t know about you, but I’m outraged.
pauls7973
3 years ago
This will give Boris even greater encouragement to swamp us with woke policies.
pauls7973
3 years ago
i think we all know what this change will bring and none of it is good. People compare Boris with Trump – if only. The UK Liberal party stands no chance since the Tories stole their platform.
Ralph Windsor
3 years ago
An interesting exercise in semantic analysis but the lived experience of the speech for many – perhaps most – listeners and viewers was of unrelieved tedium and platitude. Of course, few politicians can match a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, a Churchiill or, arguably, even a Reagan in either content or delivery. Certainly, Sleepy Joe can’t. There was nothing there that will ring down the years or decades and still inspire like Jack Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” or, of great significance today:”Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”.
Daniel Björkman
3 years ago
Now there’s a long article damning with faint praise. Screw it, I agree. Drone away, Joe. Boredom sounds really good after four years of terminal excitement.
I don’t find any praise, even faint. It’s altogether written in the ironic mode. But it is the type of thing I used in freshman comp.
Reed Howe
3 years ago
Joe Biden called for “Unity”. So did Adolph Hitler.
Reed Howe
3 years ago
Joe Biden is the author of 1994 “three strikes” crime bill. This is one of the most hideous pieces of legislation since _allah_ ordered that blasphemers should be put to death. By the bill, an individual can receive a very long prison sentence for a relatively minor criminal offence.
Lyn Griffiths
3 years ago
The wonderful thing that I felt and will continue to feel for at least another few weeks is to see that Biden has now replaced Trump. To see the Queen has replaced H&M, as working royals. So, to feel the chaos caused by the few and they replaced by positivity and it to hopefully continue through 2021 through all communication. Maybe that is going to far in a global waring of words. But to reply to the analysis, I would say the trick is that we need, “Clarity”, that is our saviour, so let’s keep talking more.
And that’s wonderful how exactly? Yesterday, three cities had rioting and attacks on Dem offices, from antifa types who do not share your sentiment, from types who want real-live purges and blood. Meanwhile, no rioting in DC yesterday, quite the contrast to four years ago when 200 people were arrested and a lot of damage was done by the oh-so-tolerant left.
The official left is communicating, all right. It has plenty to say about deprogramming and cleansing and other means of dealing with the tens of millions not in the Dem camp. Thus far, big tech has been conscripted to do what govt legally cannot. Talking is all well and good, but dialogue is a two-way event by definition, and it also involves listening.
Ah look on the bright side: least Sleepy Joe’s brother will get the contract to build the Concentration Camps. Maybe even Cokehead Hunter will set up a construction company and join in the fun – I mean profit.
Kathy Leicester
3 years ago
There is no “soothing a volatile public” with this pedophile and his heels up w***e thief faux vp.
We hate them, we hate their CCP masters, and our particular rage is settled on the betrayers on our own side of the aisle who lied and used us for years, then stabbed us when the theft happened.
There is outrage in America. There is war.
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Trump : Shame… shame on you! You’ll pay for this! I’ve got something in store for you! You’ll wish you had died of pleasure before this day is done! Now you shall learn the wisdom of the lash!
Biden: Oh please, haven’t you done enough to me?
Trump: I’ll do things to you that are beyond all known philosophies! Wait until I get my devices!
Trump: All is lost. I must die, very well, but it is I who shall have the last laugh. The imbecile Biden doesn’t know the secret of the Great Tyrant. I’m Trump. I’m Master of the Swamp.
Trump: You win, Biden. But the earth has lost its last great dictator.
Anyway, congratulations to Biden, Queen of the Universe, in the Excessive Machine. Looks very fetching in them thigh length boots. The sheer Welshness of it all.
Thank you. Interesting analysis of Biden’s rhetoric. Revealing the structure behind his heartfelt emotion, and intention. To Borrow my own phrase or two, ‘if you don’t have a dream then how you gonna have a dream come true? Not fascisms centralised-globalised economy, misogynistic theocratic slavery, mafia style thuggish dictatorships. Dream on America.
G Harris
3 years ago
Call me a cynic, but I’m still amazed after all these years, decades, centuries even, politicians still think they can get away with this middle distance staring, maybe I can see something you can’t quasi-prophetic bull, but get away with this middle distance staring, maybe I can see something you can’t quasi-prophetic bull they still apparently do.
Andrew Fisher
3 years ago
I suppose it was too much to expect that an article on political rhetoric could have garnered comments on the same subject…
The article would serve for a lecture in a freshman composition class. And it does illustrate how artificial the address was. But, after all its real significance, along with all the flags, monuments, music, military, and high priests, was to serve as part of a ritual of the state religion. And the really meaningful significance of the event was that it took place within a cordon of razor wire and fully armed military, with zero worshippers in attendance, …altogether a powerful tableaux of a failed state.
Andrew Lale
3 years ago
Biden is Caesar Augustus, for those who know their history. But Caesar Augustus in a time of the internet. So he’ll probably end up like Julius Caesar.
Pierre Pendre
3 years ago
Joe Biden in Lincoln’s line of descent in any way other than numerically is a stretch too far (every elastic has its breaking point). Biden’s talk of unity, apart from being mandatory inaugural boilerplate, was really about setting the Republicans up for blame when the usual and natural disunity manifests itself in the form of normal politics. The inauguration is a day out in fairyland for Americans and Joe wasn’t the man to break with tradition. How many Americans still buy this bla bla especially from someone of who they have so few expectations like Biden?
Stephen Follows
3 years ago
One day, someone will write an account of the 2020 election called ‘From MAGA to Gaga’.
jill dowling
3 years ago
Thanks for the article Sam although I found your explanation of the literary devices Biden used in his speech a little patronising. If we don’t know what something means, we can always look it up.
Anna Meanock
3 years ago
He means well and obviously has to roll out all the usual rhetoric in this traditional, predictable moment in American politics. The handing over of immense power from one person to another. The worry is that this is an old white man who believes that an old white God is looking out for him while he attempts to lead a fractured , disease ridden, economically floundering country into the promised land. Although he and his team will no doubt be more capable than the previous crowd, the outlook still comes across as too narrow and the rhetoric echoes with a hollow ring having been used too often before with little success.
What a weird, racist, altogether strange take on current events. I don’t know if “he means well”, but he has done well by himself and his now very wealthy family, somehow.
So let’s see. Moscow Mitch and JBiden came into the senate together, neither with wealth. 40 years later, Biden is worth $9 million, most from book sales (check his tax declarations, they’re all available), and MM worth… $35m, with no book. And now, ‘somehow’ you’re concerned about Biden’s money. Your bias needs some adjusting.
the goalposts moved rather fast, didn’t they. But it’s your bias in question, not Sidney’s. No, it totes okay that Joe cashes in and that he uses his position to let his shiftless son cash in.
Will you please give us a reliable reference to Biden’s worth.
And don’t tell us I can find it via Google. I want to know where YOU found this information. If you can’t tell us, then it would be far safer for us to assume that you did not find it.
Okay, so they are both dodgy – reasonable assumption as American politics is as bent as a £3 note. Check his tax declarations? – You take naivety to a new level! So, tell me, why do you give a free ride to Biden? Perhaps your bias needs some adjusting.
So… what? Joe has Panamanian, Cayman, Cypriot and Lichtenstein accounts that he put together riding Amtrak between DC and Wilmington every day for 30 years. Sure fooled the IRS, hey! Brilliant trick. Now if he could only just get his son Hunter to stop dropping his laptop at a dodgy computer repair shop 3,000 miles from where he lives, and take all his personal highly incriminating unencripted information off first for crying out loud… well, then he could pull off the hidden billions thing!!
What are you babbling on about? Look…. All Americans politicians are crooks – Everyone knows that except Joe’s cronies. Thankfully, being British, I won 1st prize in the lottery of life and don’t have to give a pair of dingo’s kidneys about what goes on in a squalid third world country that can’t even hold an election without screwing it up. PS: Don’t let Sleepy Joe near the nuclear button thingy, he might press it thinking that he was ordering a pizza.
What are you babbling on about? Look….Americans politics is bent – Everyone knows that except you. Thankfully, being British, I won 1st prize in the lottery of life and don’t give a pair of dingo’s kidneys about what goes on in a third world country that can’t even hold an election without fouling it up. PS: Don’t let Sleepy Joe near the nuclear button thingy, he might press it thinking that he was ordering a pizza.
Almost as if he has been put in to give “old white men” a bad name.
James Moss
3 years ago
Classic deflection. You should watch the hand not the mouth. Back in the office he signed 17 executive orders, beginning to roll back some of Trump’s mess. Such rapid action is not part of the usual tropery of inauguration day. As for the pageantry – I quite liked the poet.
Yep, the storms here alright. https://www.whitehouse.gov/… Trump was a p***y grabber; Biden’s given the key to the schoolgirls lockerroom to the perverts
Jeremy Van Dyke
3 years ago
What a silly article. Dissecting a speech into technical jargon when that’s not the point. I imagine academics analyzing and debating the precise definition of ‘civil war’ whilst bombs go off about them.
You’re right. Last wedns. Qshaman & co. recalled nothing so much as the storming of the Bastille. And the siege image of the vacant capital grounds told much more eloquently than Biden the real message of the collapse of the American system of governance that he so “hallowed” to an empty mall.
Right now the think-tankers are feverishly at work desperately devising how to save their owners power with face. The plans will all be variants of military/police/intel camo’d with a veneer of “The Existential Threat” from the MAGA deplorables.
mark.schoenenberger.03
3 years ago
The inauguration was blessed with a wonderful performance by Lady Gaga of America’s ponderous national anthem and Amanda Gorman’s sage, inspirational, and revealing poetry. Biden will be well served if he puts Amanda on his staff of speech writers… Better to propel her to her dream of becoming President herself.
After cheating Bernie out of the nomination, using the Socialist national anthem sung by a ridiculously glam’d up LGBTQ pop artist was pretty offensive.
This has been a fight between big tech, the media, the global elite and ordinary Americans. Round one has been won by the former and all talk of unity is just that, talk. Like everything Biden does the speech was written for him to deliver. The real Biden is rarely seen and it is not impressive.
What worries me most though is the naked one sidedness and determination of the media and tech, to control every aspect the narrative. Democrats seem obsessed with ensuring that Americans will henceforth, live within a narrow code of behaviour and speech, similar to the model that has been tried over the last 20 years in Europe.
The thing is though, America is not Europe. I am not sure that Americans can remain half-slave and half free. Americans must eventually become all one or all the other. There is no middle ground for an American between death and life.
So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts, is what you’re saying. Yeah, that sounds about right. I swear, conservatives are the worst at coming up with insults. First it was “social justice warrior,” the most badass-sounding pejorative imaginable. Now it’s all whining about “elites.” If your enemies are the elite, what does that make you? The mediocre? The underachievers? The jealous losers?
I mean, that does seem to be the size of it. Conservatives used to have one saving grace: they valued competence and results. They worshipped ruthless big business to a sociopathic extent, but at least big businesses are per definition success stories, organisations that can be assumed to be doing at least something right. Now they have rebranded themselves as the champions of people who have nothing to offer the world but their inflated self-importance. Oh, the critical-theory-wielding hyperactivists on the left certainly have no useful skills beyond a way with words, but the new ideal on the right seems to be to not even have that much.
You mean, civilised behaviour? Yeah, I agree that Democrats have an uphill battle with that one.
“So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts”
The same elitist nonsense that lost Hillary Clinton an election and left America terminally divided.
Well, how would you describe those who invaded the Capitol at Trump’s encouragement? Patriots? The description seems fine for groups like the Proud Boys.
In this country we have been treated to the specatcle of the Eton and Oxbridge brigade railing against “elites”. Its pure nonsense.
“Well, how would you describe those who invaded the Capitol at Trump’s encouragement? Patriots?”
No better or worse than those who burnt Portland.
The Eton and Oxbridge brigade are indeed elitists -they hate Boris Johnson for siding with the working class against chaps like you. Obviously he did it to win an election, but I don’t care.
Antifa. And a few BLM.
Trump may have been in the wrong, but the fact is that he called on them to march and protest PEACEFULLY.
But there were anti Trump people in the procession who were successful in showing Trump in a bad light.
Obama and Biden did it too, though not so memorably.
I am talking about allowing people to make decisions that are properly within the scope of a private individual’s authority. A classic example would be the Middle Class “deserting” the cities for the suburbs and thereby “shirking” its financial responsibility to the city. It’s not illegal or immoral to choose a place to live. But when people acquired the ability to make that choice, they do so overwhelmingly in a way that particular interest groups found destructive to a particular “collective vision”. Those interest groups want to recapture the power to dragoon people into the service of their agendas. Lack of choice leads to lack of opportunity, lack of investment, poverty and hopelessness.
However, all is not lost to the socialist. It occurs to me that the Mars One project is available for disaffected Socialists looking for their utopia. And look here. Mars is already nothing but dirt and rock and poisonous air so it’s already 80% along the way to becoming a Socialist Paradise. They don’t call it the Red Planet for nothing
They would immediately start a war with earth over no reason. Socialists love war. Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs on the Middle East in the last year of his presidency. That is 3 bombs every hour for a whole year long.
If you think Obama was a socialist, you might not know what that word means.
No, he is not a socialist-the Mao Christmas ornament is a clue…
According to Jimmy Dore, the US air force in the ME actually ran out of bombs in 2015, under the Obama maladministration.
Remind me again you started the war(s)?
It’s good to see you actually post a comment, rather than just down-voting your way through…but what did you just say or imply?
You have no idea what a socialist is. None.
As matter of fact I do, socialists where united workers. Nowadays socialism does not exist anymore. It is become just another frase for left wing politics. People who identify as socialist nowadays probably never worked a normal days job their entire lives, they most probably despise people who do, and call them names like ‘deplorables’.
I always thought they just wanted handouts and were for taxing the hardworking people heavily under the doctrine of socialism to finance their schemes of we all own everything. In practice it was nothing of the sort and proper business plumetted in the expectation that the state would do everything for you.
Your starter for 10, In 1941 (clue there) which “socialist” country launched “Operation Barbarossa” invading a neighbouring country causing 20,000,000 dead, amongst other things.
A National SOCIALIST country …
Germany of course.
and don’t forget to mention the bombs dropped by Pres Dubya with his war in pursuit of non-existent WMD. A dumb pointless war, it turns out.
“In 2004, the 9/11 Commission said there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda.[68] No stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found in Iraq.”
https://www.wikiwand.com/en…
‘The Expanse’ is rapidly becoming reality…
Spare the red planet please!
“Civilised behaviour”, right, like the burning down of cities and mass violence and destruction they encouraged, condoned, or excused for months on end last year.
Add double standards, hypocrisy, lying, plots bordering on treason, outright contempt for dissent or civilized debate.
The burning and rioting continues, setting fires and smashing doors and windows Antifa and BLM have barely stopped to draw breath.
From Seattle and Portland:
“We don’t want Biden. We want revenge for police murders, imperialist wars, and fascist massacres,” read a banner they marched under, while others carried a banner saying, “We are not governable,” which was dotted with anarchy symbols.
Well, I know that can’t possibly have happened, because I haven’t seen it reported on BBC news.
Oh, wait a minute…
Ha Ha you cynic you but I think you are right.
Anarchy is usually a communist ploy to destroy countries then take over by force. America is too strong to let that happen. Shame on the democrats for idly standing by.
“Worthless incompetent louts”, said the “civilized” man, typing from his aerie, using all of the big words…signifying nothing, but contempt.
So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners and the worthless incompetent louts, is what you’re saying.
Wow, really? And then you accuse conservatives of insulting people? You just took a swipe at most of the country, the people not in media or tech, the people who pay the bills.
‘So between the people with skill, knowledge and manners…’
They are the people that brought you Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, the financial crash, the looting and burning of numerous American cities last year, the suppression of Occupy (an uprising with a legitimate cause) etc. Trump and his supporters are p***y cats compared to the damage your lot did.
Bravo Daniel, well said.
Do you look in the mirror when applying your brown lipstick?
I am not sure I would count the episodes that have plagued the West Coast recently (and thoroughly championed by the Democrats) as civilised behaviour. It seems to me that the USA has sunk into a very UNcivil war.
Quite honestly as a Britain I am really surprised that America could stoop to this behaviour. I always believed they were friendly honest people and I still believe most of them are but what I have seen lately really gives me grave doubts about the country.
Well said…. Conservatives want what they want and care little how they get it, see for example the 2016 election “win” with vats of help by Vladimir Putin, the disregard for their own rules when installing Amy Coney Barrett in an election year, their support of the baseless Trump claim that the election was fraudulent, rugged, stolen. And as you point out, Mr. Bjorkman, conservatives support incompetence in their leaders, the more incompetent the better. There is genius in the favoring of incompetence in GOP candidates as the cagey conservatives can then direct the elected wind bag “leaders” to fill the coffers of the wealthy through lucrative government contracts (eg. Kushner’s cozy deals to direct our national stockpiles of medical supplies to corporations who sold them at profit to desperate hospitals during a pandemic and then Kushner justified the deal by saying the stockpiles didn’t belong to the American people anyway). Conservatives are about one idea: maintaining their status quo and all others be damned.
Typical of the far left to accuse others of the very crimes they commit themselves. The Russia hoax was always that, and was eventually disproved. On the other hand, anyone who listened to even 5 hours of testimony from ordinary Americans in the hearings in the disputed states would realize that the fraud was pervasive and systemic. Something is really wrong with the Democrats. (That is not to say that all is sweetness and light in the Republican party.)
To complain of Kushner’s deals is fair enough, but a bit rich coming from supporters of Hunter Biden’s father. And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Good ole Uncle Joe is on tape admitting he extorted the Ukraine authorities.
America is dying, and it’s appropriate that the new President is a living corpse.
I did listen to some of the testimony claiming to have witnessed voting irregularities. I was not impressed with the witnesses’ presentations. In particular I found Rudy’s witness unstable and confused though she was loud!
As to my citing Kushner’s private deal making with publicly owned supplies, it has nothing to do with whether or not I support Biden, who, as far as I have ascertained, is not besmirched by his son’s failures or successes.
Citing old saws such as the apple not falling from the tree doesn’t really mesh with the conservative mantra of personal responsibility… I assume from your posting that you are a conservative. The father and son are separate people and so each should have all the reward and all the blame his actions merit. Fred Trump, for example, is neither elevated nor leveled by his sons’ failures or successes. Donald Trump, likewise, is neither elevated nor leveled by his father.
Just as I would never assume that your positions have anything to do with your father.
As to the claim of Biden admitting extortion: I have encountered no evidence, in print or on tape, where Biden admitted extorting any funds from the Ukraine. He did say he pressured Ukraine to remove a corrupt government official. Biden’s claim is supported by Marie Yovanovich’s testimony. As Ms Yovanovich has not been indicted for perjury during that testimony, I have to conclude Biden’s claim that he pressured for the removal of the Ukrainian official because of proven corruption is correct. Please provide your evidence to the claim you make about extortion.
As to the decline of America and the mind of its president: Neither is America dying nor is President Biden’s mental faculty moribund.
America is proving resilient in the face of a perilous virus and a consequent economic downturn. Yes, the death numbers are too high; yes the economy is suffering. However, President is pushing 100,000,000 vaccines in 100 days and an economic plan to revitalize the economy.
Biden’s thinking is sharp: He was clear about his reasons for signing each of the 17 documents quite late yesterday …. after a very full day of inaugural activities. His program of 100,000,000 vaccinations in 100 days recognizes the fact that controlling the virus is the foundation to eliminating the economic distress plaguing millions and the psychological distress that comes from listening to rising death tolls and rising unemployment claims.
I trust your report of America’s dying and Biden’s mental faculties being moribund are simply Conservative disappointment at election results.
I do wish people would stop using this sort of language. Covid is neither the Black Death nor Spanish Flu.
Unfortunately The Republican party has Status Quo of Mitch McConnell,74.5M Americans voted for Trump they could/Will desert Republicans for a Third Party…
Still clinging to the Putin talking point and the claim that ACB is somehow illegitimate. Your phony pretense about filling one’s coffers leaves out not just Joe and his relatives, but also Hillary who banked on the Clinton name in trading influence for millions.
And as you point out, Mr. Bjorkman, conservatives support incompetence in their leaders, the more incompetent the better.
that must explain the election of Biden, a man who spent nearly 50 years at the public trough with nothing of substance to show for it beyond the crime bill. Also explains his VP, who the party summarily rejected during the primaries. Harris did not muster a single delegate, and her campaign was essentially ended during a debate over her time as AG in California which was mostly spent warehousing black men.
“Warehousing”
Thank you for increasing and
improving my vocabulary.
Now now in the UK, convicts are now defined as ‘prison users’ in the left leaning lexicon
Is not networking, referencing, name dropping, etc. just coat tailing or banking in connections by another name? If so then everyone who has ever applied for a job and submitted a CV, resume, letters of reference or who has landed a job as the result of knowing someone with connections or being related to someone (such as Trump) is guilty of what appears to be banking-on or riding on the coat tails of others. No one is 100% self made. We all are indebted to one degree or another to those who came before us. So Hillary Clinton got a leg up because she’s married to Bill, but in the end, that connection has stained her image.
There is nothing inherently bad in public service as long as you do serve the public’s interest while in that position. Those who compare people serving the public in service jobs as to pigs feeding at a trough are including our military members, teachers, policemen, firemen in that group of pigs at the trough. I get the impression, Mr Lekas, that you are envious and suspicious of those who have service jobs. If so, perhaps you should get one of those jobs (especially as a soldier, a teacher, policeman, or firefighter). If you do, you may find yourself working very hard for very little food at the trough. as Lindsay Graham found out at the airport, even big pigs feeding at the trough for a very long time have to take a lot of abuse to stay at the trough.
I see you just labelled over half of America ‘worthless incompetent louts’. Which has effectively been the strategy from the blue church for the past many years. I see the anointed have learnt very little from the past 4 years then… The conditions that allowed a ‘Trump’ to come into existence are still here.. and the hollow & empty Biden spectacle will do very little to change that. How many more times must the progressive echo chamber come crashing down before the lesson is learnt?
You are assuming that Biden lasts and isn’t replaced by Kamala Harris. That could really help things
if you want to hang onto that as some kind of solution then knock yourself out. Just don’t be surprised when she also turns out to represent the interests of the moneyed elite first and foremost and the growing underlying resentment and breakdown of social cohesion soon enough produces another ‘Trump’ that make the first one look positively benign by comparison.
And no doubt when even that happens the progressive echo chamber will still fail to learn any lessons whatsoever.
When I came across some poster sneering at the uneducated the other day, it occurred to me that almost all wars, atrocities and large-scale human rights abuses in history have been initiated by people who belonged to the most educated stratum in their society and of their day. The “elite”, in other words.
The “worthless”, as you rather disturbingly call them, have done little wrong, comparatively.
Does it never occur to you that your sneering tone, undisguised contempt and use of sweeping generalisations don’t do your arguments any favours? The way you come across, I would honestly prefer to be governed by the “worthless” than by you and the rest of your self-appointed priest class.
I genuinely gasped and then laughed out loud at that. It seems people define “civilised behaviour” in different ways. You seem to consider civilised behaviour to be writing off people as “worthless” and hurling vicious insults at whole swathes of the population. Yours is the “civilised behaviour” of the priests of the Catholic Inquisition, medieval noblemen, enforcers of the British Empire and even, dare I say it, the Nazis.
What’s the best way to punish someone if you can’t punch them? Make them angry. I’m sure this Bjorkman is chuckling away as he reads these replies. He’s the kid who pokes a stick at a dog in a cage. Best to ignore him, which I’m sure everyone in his life does.
I think I’ve had some perfectly normal conversations with him. This post got my goat, though.
Sneerati like Bjork just can’t help themselves. Poisonous contempt for others exudes with every sentence they utter.
Skill, knowledge and manners equals rape, pillage, war & silencing dissent. You know, civilised behaviour.
I see the Elites as a highly privileged cohort with power and privilege and often wealth not necessarily justified by competence or results, whose preoccupation is maintaining that status quo. I certainly don’t have a problem with status that is earned, though not huge disparities for little contribution. I do have a problem with the unholy alliance between the left and wealthy global corporates and their marriage of convenience with little in common other than the ability to utilise each other for their own benefit, promoting the value of identity above competence. I find it fascinating the way the elites are so fond of a supposedly egalitarian movement who don’t seem to realize the contradiction and see why they find it useful to act as allies. I suspect it will last until such times it poses a threat to their privilege, in the meantime it’s an amusing distraction to the detriment of the rest.
You mean, civilised behaviour? ie the behaviour of those living in cities. That’s a varied lot with varied behaviour.
Unherd Discussion Forum calling Daniel Björkman, come in Daniel Björkman! Are you receiving, Daniel Björkman? You now have right of reply.
He’s riding an asteroid heading on a leftward trajectory.
Inverted reality
Talking as if one side represents the whole people is itself a classic rhetorical trick. You mean some, under a half, of ordinary Americans. Somewhat more ‘OAs’ voted for Biden…
Okay, I have one sort of side issue problem with something said in this article, which it seems the main supposedly entertaining point of it is the listing of clichés that Biden used. When the author said this: “Barack Obama’s lavish oratorical gifts” he lost me. I listened to many of Obama’s speeches during his 8 years in office, and I have to say that the media propped him up continually. The man was a very boring speech giver. He was often a literal snooze fest, so for this author to continue the mantra that he was a gifted orator makes me wonder if he ever actually listened to the guy’s droning “now let me be clear” speeches.
Next, the most important thing Joe could do is say that he was going to be president for everybody,, including those who didn’t support him. That was the best thing he did. Let’s see how that pans out. That will be the measure of the man in this fractured nation, how he deals with those who disagree with him on so much. Was his speech just talk, or will there be a real effort?
Next is Kamala. I hope Biden is able to finish out his term because that lady scares me. First off, she has no charm at all. Biden has charm, he’s likable, like he has no malice, but she just seems angry and full of attitude. When I saw her debate performance with Pence it made it clear to me that she is a light weight. She seemed in way over her depth in that debate. That coupled with the unlikable factor, and the sort of mean-girl graceless attitude (sort of like Michelle Obama with that thin veneer of niceness), I hope Biden’s geriatric brain holds up and that the corrupt money deals that he did through his son Hunter don’t mean that he will be exiting soon.
Working for everybody including those who didn’t vote for him (?!) That is one of the all time political cliches ““ up there alongside “now is the time for national unity” and “we must all pull together as one nation”. Empty sentiment. Forget unity and reconciliation ““ white supremacy will be the prime target.
Yes, Obama was ridiculously overrated as an orator. I think he made one lively speech in his 2008 campaign. That impressed the pundits and they stubbornly stayed impressed in spite of subsequent lack lustre performances.
Well if there is one thing that liberals do it is to prop up their own. Even the most mediocre performance is lauded. I am going to give Biden a chance though. I hope that some things will change. I think they almost have to. America is really in a bad place right now.
Kamala Harris is actually a legitimate horrible person. She was infamous for her abuses even back when she was a California prosecutor. Harris’s presidential campaign was destroyed in a couple of minutes by Tulsi Gabbard bringing up her record. Shortly afterward, the DNC did their best to destroy Gabbard including, wait for it… “SHE WAS A RUSSIAN ASSET!.” Since then Harris has had one of those traditional American political reinventions. I’m sure you know the type. “Hmm, that person sounds like a saint but I still have not heard anything about anything they have actually done.”
Americans spent four years wondering how we got Trump. I am left wondering how the heck we got Kamala and pray that Biden continues to take his meds.
‘When the author said this: “Barack Obama’s lavish oratorical gifts” he lost me.’
Exactly. Obama was one of the most overrated human beings of all time. He looked good and sounded good – as long as you didn’t pay any attention to the actual words or judge his actions relative to those words. He spoke pure liberal while acting fascist e.g. smashing Occupy in a heartbeat and allowing 5.1 million families to be lose their homes between 2009 and 2012.
“Yes, we can!” (Obama), Turned out he couldn’t. Will almost certainly turn out Biden can’t either.
It is more like: “No, you can’t”.
Obomber Got his Election mantra ,from” Bob The builder”
Many people mocked Clint Eastwood awkwardly talking to an empty chair, symbolising Obama’s vacuity . How true it all turned out….
She’s obviously exercising her black privilege.
…despite not being black.
I may despise Harris but I think you go to far on the sleeping around. The man in question is Willie Brown. Understand that when I tell you Willie Brown is the Jeremy Epstein of California politics, I am neither exaggerating or joking. The man is a massive creep though few people have heard of him. I do not know if she slept with him but she almost certainly had to put up with some disgusting behavior before she was “allowed” into California politics.
It’s been made pretty clear that she and Willie were an item, and never once have you heard her complain about it. Harris later went on to build a record as AG most notable for warehousing scores of black men on petty drug charges, periodically blocking evidence that would exonerate them. Tulsi Gabbard took her down in one of the debates. Dems themselves summarily rejected Harris who did not muster one single delegate in the primaries. She was picked for her skin color and nothing else.
Alex Lekas, how can you be so cynical? She certainly wasn’t picked just for her skin colour…It was also because she was a woman. Pronouns she/her…/s
I suspect both Biden’s and Harris’s limitations will become crashingly obvious very quickly. Unfortunately, they’ll get a free pass from the MSM and liberals more generally because the ‘Democrats good, Republicans bad’ will be a constant refrain going forward. Although, of course the mid terms may bring an opportunity to change the Senate mathematics and therefore the necessary scrutiny.
Obama’s skill was in his delivery. It was the content that was often lacking. I remember, on hearing the speech he gave after he won the election, thinking, wow. I was disappointed after reading its transcript. And yet, it’s been included in a book of great speeches of history. It pales into insignificance next to the others in the book.
A beautifully written article, and I really loved the vocabulary with the meanings attached, how fun to see a speech dissected like that.
In the Deep South of the old days the cliche of a Politician making his stump speech was that he was ‘For Motherhood, and Against the Bole Weevil’. Just a shorter version of Biden’s speech really.
Except that this incumbent happens to be against motherhood, certainly if this is within what used to be called “an ordinary stable marriage”. I do not know his stance on the Bole Weevil…
…or cornpone and hominy grits?
I cannot trust a person who is against grits. If they’re to your taste, fair enough, but opposition to them crosses a moral line.
/welcometothesouth
I confess I’ve never tried them. But I remember Tom Lehrer mentioning them in his Dixie song.
Think: polenta.
think Southern tofu – they take on the flavor whatever else is involved. It’s why they are often paired with red eye gravy and work well with many breakfast foods. A little butter and salt are always involved, slow cooked is better than instant. They’re not for everyone but what is. I like them, especially with a couple of over easy eggs, mixing the two together and perhaps dropping in some bacon pieces for added crunch. Now, I’ve made myself hungry so thanks. 🙂
It feeds on cotton. It ravaged crops in the 1940’s.
Unity hasn’t lasted long. The latest press release states that Biden
“will sign an Executive Order beginning the work of embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic
racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and
institutions,”
Yep, the phantom menace of systemic racism will be front and centre.
The Order will “define equity as the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities, such asBlack, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; LGBTQ+ persons;people with disabilities; religious minorities, persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
All federal agencies must “undertake a baseline review of the state of equity within their agency and deliver an action plan within 200 days to address unequal barriers to opportunity in agency policies and programs.”
Harris explained what equity is in one of her election ads. It’s making sure “everyone ends up in the same place.” (Except pampered Senators and Congress’persons’, naturally.) A dystopian dream. Ask anyone from a former communist state.
Biden will also reverse Trump’s executive order that banned federal agencies, contractors, subcontractors, and grantees from instructing their employees to follow the ideology of critical
theory–impicit bias training etc.
Some unity. Critical theory is about dividing people to cause chaos. All in the interests of the Revolution, of course. The CCP must be laughing their heads off.
Biden has problems on the left as well as the right. According to one report the former aren’t waiting either: straight after the speech the Antifa/BLM mob were attacking the Democrat office in Portland (where else?) chanting “We don’t want Biden, we want revenge”. Who’s for critical race theory, or unconscious bias training?
The country is more than 50 years removed from “colored only” anything and Dems would have us believe that Jim Crow is still alive, the same Jim Crow their party enacted. Today, a minority is more likely to benefit from that status than face discrimination. Read: Harris, Kamala. Were she white, she might not even be a Senator any more what with her AG track record of warehousing black men on minor drug offenses.
This discussion will still be going to be going on 50 years from now. Because there is power and money to be had in the grievance industry, and because there is no interest in exploring any reasons why one group persistently lags behind the others or how policy helps to perpetuate that.
I though BLM was all about colored only?
also, I’ve read that Biden’s economic policy team has signalled it will be the first administration ever to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender, climate change, rather than indicators like GDP and deficit ratios.
Further, he has pledged support for small businesses hit hard by Covid but only if they are run by people of colour, women, or LGBT.
(white men need not apply)
yes, the Chinese must be laughing – and none of this sounds unifying, either
“to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender, climate change, rather than indicators like GDP and deficit ratios”
I read that as well. I mean, how stupid, how really dense can you get? Post-modernism rules the day. #ugh
Martin Luther King would probably be horrified that the Democrats have shot if in the opposite direction to that for which he aimed.
They seem to want apartheid as imagined by Verwoerd.
On top of that we see private jetsetters lecturing ordinary Americans as they flit around the world promoting ever more taxes which the elite evade.
On top of this, in their effort to atomise society by making it a multitude of mistrustful cultures, they open borders and undercut American workers pay.
I suspect next time the response of the Right will not be so diplomatic and kindly as Donald Trump (and I really mean that unironically).
Yes, they are creating a dystopia such as the world has never seen before.
‘Moderate’ Biden is just a puppet, a ‘potemkin droid’ of the Far Left WOkEists. This was revealed on Day One. #truth
Signing up to ”Paris climate Agenda” will Increase Millions of Americans Power /Energy prices will Surge,after 4 years of relative stability..
“Lies told for power and profit”, he jabbed at the man who took no pay and spent a fortune, while OBiden became wealthy, somehow…
Yes, his little trope about unity and ‘values’ then at the end – he just couldn’t help himself. I see no unity on the horizon at all – just demands for submission. I was not a Trump fan, and still not really, but I can see wholeheartedly what the conservatives (and I disagree with them politically on many things) mean when they talk about the looney authoritarian left that is obsessed with purging wrongthink from America. For that alone I am far more pro Trump than pro Biden. The far left scare me far more than the Proud Boys because the far left are given a free pass under the cover of ‘righteousness’ which the Proud Boys are definitely not.
So basically he was saying “We’ll pull through this providing all you Trumpers behave yourselves and come over the fence to our way of thinking” Thank the good Lord we don’t have politicians making vomit inducing speeches at ceremonies like this in the UK.
An extraordinary statement. To suggest that politicians in the UK do not make similar entreaties to attempt to persuade others to accept their way of thinking is far from reality. It is the very nature of politics regardless of where that may be.
It may be you are not personally engaged by what Biden said but UK politicians are equally culpable.
The alleged behaviour of UK politicians does not make Biden less (or more) culpable. Their behaviour does not excuse Biden.
Similarly a murderer is not absolved because there are other murderers.
Right, it’s a ritual performance. And apparently he hasn’t studied Churchill.
Well it’s nice to know that at least one person listened to whatever nonsense Biden uttered.
More than one, it was actually quite important to listen and not pull your MAGA hat down over your ears.
Not being particularly interested in the speech of this corrupt, sock puppet doe not make one a MAGA hat wearer, but I know that for many of you it is difficult to let go of TRUMP!.
Impossible. It’s a baseball type hat, you can’t do it.
Sort of demonstrates the cynicism that enabled Trump.
It’s going to be tough, withdrawing from the TDS binge…
You would know. How’s Q doing? Proud Boys? Rudi ok? Found any more stray Biden laptops lately?
Bwahaha.
Clearly you have never read anything that I have posted. You project your silly fantasies onto others. I am quite sure that you know, and have read, much more about the things that you mentioned than I do-keep digging, someone will come along and help you out of your hole…
Those of us who were lucky enough to miss the speech, were then treated to a video from CNN showing a line of lights heading up to the Washngton Monument and just in case we thought they were just lights, we were informed that they were Biden’s arms stretching out to embrace the country. That was over the top hysteria of course
i am far more frightened of what is going on now then I ever was with Trump. Now that the Dems are in power (and I have been one) they are unleashing their pent up desire to curtail civil liberties in every way they can with more 911 commissions, more people thrown off social media and a more subservient media that questions nothing.
The worst part is that my progressive friends don’t care and worse, don’t care to know..
Surprising that the writer does not acknowledge that the speech was the product of a team of scriptwriters working on it for over a month with additions made after the Capitol riots. How much of it did the writer think Biden wrote himself would have been a much more interesting article!
Every politician has a speechwriter. Even lowly MPs. I know because I used to be one.
On the day of the inauguration – they led Biden into a room to sign Executive Orders. Many press people were in the room. Biden mumbled through a dense mask. What he said was unintelligible and after he signed one order, his handlers quickly rushed people out of the room. They had to have realized that Biden really didn’t know what he was signing – he could barely read the first order. Scary days ahead folks. Just keep moving on folks, please leave the room, while Biden does what we are instructing him to do.
Had that been Trump…there were have been numerous people around him while he signed. They’d be jocularity, hand shaking and then some pictures taken.
Not for Biden, he needs to be ‘managed’.
;);) …
“Lies told for power and profit” was certainly a jab.
It was also a glaring lack of self-awareness and once more, flies right over the head of the alleged public watchdog the media is supposed to be. It will be interesting to see how long the hagiography-style coverage continues.
Since Trump did not take his salary and left office poorer than he started, and was financed almost exclusively by his own wealth and very small donations, it would appear that at least the “for profit” part of this man’s comment is wrong.
I didn’t watch at the time but I see there is one sizeable portion of his “fellow Americans” are not invited to O’Biden’s unity fest, the “White Supremacists” which means those dissenters who voted for Trump — who appears to have attracted large numbers of blacks and Latinos perhaps because until the virus, his policies gave more of these groups jobs than previous presidents did including the fraudulent Obama whose sole talent was making a fortune for himself. It seems too that one of the first things that the new president, once known as a IRA fan, did on entering the Oval Offlice was to take the Churchill bust out and put into storage. I rather doubt that Kamala Harris will restore it when she gives the old white man a shove. One suspects the tyrants of Iran and Communist China are gloating. Meanwhile, I suggest the British Embassy in Washington send over to the White House a bust of Wellington and an abridged edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
It has been only four years since the American people voted for Donald Trump, amidst an avalanche of cries from the opposition that his win was illegitimate. His policies are now being reversed at speed, which will only further alienate his constituency. His opponents were constantly ‘looking down their noses’ at his style, whilst fully aware that he was not a ‘proper’ politician and did not use the same well worn phrasebook. The attacks on him were personal, which is why he responded in kind. In this recent election he got more votes than President Obama ever received. I give ‘Sleepy Joe” one term unless he wakes up as to why this was, because those ‘mail-in’ votes are unlikely to be there next time!
President Trump is probably the first president in living memory to leave office poorer than when he took office. No one will be able to say the same about the crook Biden.
He also started no Wars, again a first in 40+ years. The same wont be said about Biden.
Retail voting doesn’t count, period. The donor class picks the POTUS. That was the bottom line illegitimacy of this last election, and all previous. And even in the exception when we actually have a “democratic” free & fair” etc, election and populism actually wins, it loses, to wit Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate, etc.. And even then he’s a fake populist actually working to deregulate and tax-cut for the rich and toady to Israel.
If this presidency is boring, I think that will be an improvement.
Let’s hope the endless wars don’t start back up. A lot of money gets passed around via the military industrial complex. Hunter Biden was able to get the Biden family a lot of money through US money bound for Ukraine to “protect” it from Russia. War is something a lot of Republican and Democrat politicians love That and the US being the chief meddler of the world as if we’re the “good people” qualified to make the world a better place, and tell everyone else what they should be doing. That works well as long as we’re spreading money around. That can be delivered in a very boring way, unless your on the other end of the bombs, bullets’, psy-ops, and negative media campaign.
Trump’s (American populism) supporters have had a taste of what the ruling class normally reserves for countries it wants to destabilize, so I’ll be glad if it’s turned away from American citizens again, even if there is endless money printing, and other nation meddling. I think everyone is ready to settle in to a more comfortable culture where our children’s futures have been sold to China, and digital left-wing authoritarians tell us what is true, that 4 legs are good and 2 are bad, and not to listen to fake news types who say any different.
Go to YouTube and watch “Tucker: Democratic Party is planning a war on half of America” he has a lot of clips of what democrats are saying about Trump supporters (or gulags). The correct conclusion is, the war agains the American people is only just started, and there will be blood.
If I’d decided to boil a frog, I’d do it slowly, so the frog didn’t notice
Yes, a sick making speech as someone below has said. And nothing to do with what the reality of Democrat rule will mean . Wake up to reality .
Lincoln wrote the most beautiful presidential inaugural addresses ever. They will almost certainly never be equaled and a speechwriter should really stay away from their phrasing, rather than try to echo them. “We are not enemies, but friends” was from the closing words of Lincoln’s first inaugural, introduced by the phrase “I am loath to close.” Everyone should go and read the whole paragraph that follows then compare its haunting phrases and generous spirit with the paint-by-numbers rhetoric of Biden’s speech. By the way, “enemies” and “friends” are antonyms, but “adversaries” and “neighbours” aren’t. The word Biden’s speechwriter was looking for was “allies”.
The “hallowed ground” reference, which Sam seemed to like, was a hugely inappropriate Lincoln theft. The Gettysburg Address spoke of a battlefield where over seven thousand people were shot to death on both sides. Biden was talking about a riot where one unarmed woman, a veteran, was shot to death as she tried to enter the Capitol through a broken window. To draw an equivalence between the two is simply obscene. as if America were in a new civil war. This isn’t healing rhetoric; it’s highly inflammatory. It shows that Biden is still a hugely divisive politician, not at all a unifier. He is still the Biden who talked about Republicans putting blacks back in chains, rather strange rhetoric, by the way, to describe members of the party of the Great Emancipator.
Mostly, Biden’s medical team seems to have done wonders in holding the demented old man together for the speech. It did fall apart though when Biden said: “”We must end this uncivil war, red against blue, rural versus Erland…”, when “urban” was intended. Which Erland was Biden thinking of? Or was this, as some closed captions indicated, just as close as Biden could come with his slurred speech to saying “Ireland”? Remove the gaffe and the phrase still disappoints. “This uncivil war” again implies that the United States is already in a new civil war. This is again inflammatory rhetoric. And since Sam wants to talk about style, why didn’t Biden’s speechwriter go with “rural against urban”? Whoever was responsible went for elegant variation. As Fowler said: “it is the second rate writers that are chiefly open to the allurements of elegant variation.”
I especially like the “paint by numbers” analogy.
Obama’s “lavish oratory”? Really? All I ever heard was various versions of “Together we must face this challenge. And we must face this challenge together”.
Exactly, while enabling the disasters of Libya and Yemen (among others) and allowing the banks to throw 5.1 million families out of their homes during his first term. What a piece of garbage he was and is.
He (Obomber)Also Pliagarised ”Bob the Builder” ‘We Can do it’ Joe O’biden pliagarised another Globalist fool Neil Kinnock
Perhaps the new administration needs to update that tiresome old incription on the Lincoln memorial with a few words which are, like, y’know, relevant:
This Nation under whichever God is, like, y’know, cool for you ““
Shall have a new birth of wokeness ““
Government of Celebrities by Celebrities for Celebrities’ (and their pet causes)
Shall not perish from the the Earth ““
until such time as Celebrities declare themselves “betrayed!”
Nice to read some grammatically informed critique but what else would we expect from Joe Biden ( and I object to the use of the Trumpist “Sleepy Joe”-unoriginal! America is sentimental and corny. They can still say things like “the world looks at us and marvels” (Tom Hanks) Yes, the world does react but mostly in shock and dismay at a nation that still peddles the “exceptionalism” nonsense. The US is in trouble, deep, murky and puzzling to many in siders, so they give us what Joe gave us.
Somewhat hilariously, Antifa/BLM smashed up the DNC HQ in Portland last night, which is the first time they have done anything useful, apart from attacking the CNN building in Atlanta last summer.
A Liberal leftist quoting Saint Augustine !! Hillarious you couldn’t make it up , he either hasn’t read and or has little knowledge of the nature and beliefs of the man he is quoting or he is simply disingenuous and very selective ..
Nothing quite like the inauguration of a new leader to bring out the platitudes.
Or the drivel.
An excellent synopsis.
However, as you say it was far too long and full of platitudes.
Marcus Tullius Cicero would not have been impressed.
Why would you be pleased to see someone who 1. Lied about his college qualifications, said he was top of class when in fact near bottom 2. Seduced saintly Jill away from her marriage, shagging behind her husband’s back 3. Said bussing would lead to the racial jungle, 4. Plagiarised Neil Kinnock’s speeches (!) 5. Eulogised Robert Byrd, his mentor and ex-KKK Grand Kleagle 6. His brother, son and daughter form a corruption family grafting off his position his whole career 7. He has been a politician his entire adult life, never had a job, 8. Son is a crack addict, sex addict, dishonorable navy reserve discharge who corruptly profited from father’s role in both Ukraine and China to earn millions plus have people leave him 2.8k diamonds on his hotel pillow as gifts. The guy is disgusting.
Agreed with everything you say, a very ‘nasty piece of work’ indeed.
Was he also a draft dodger? I can find nothing on this.
Genuinely interesting although as with most of them, I’m sure Biden didn’t write a word of it.
While fully aware that talk is cheap, I was quite impressed by Biden’s speech.
There was one thing I found a bit odd, though. Given the lack of vocal support for the USA, its history and its traditions from some Democrats and people on the left of US politics – I have seen little Democrat Party opposition to Critical Race Theory or the 1619 (?) project and the concomitant beliefs that the USA is a “white supremacist project” and all that stuff – it was slightly disconcerting to hear Biden evoking the great American traditions and myths like “We’ve never, ever failed when we’ve acted together” and similar guff.
As far as I know, there was also very little objection to Biden’s words from the more vocal social justice crowd either, though if exactly the same myths had been rolled out by Trump he would have been accused of promoting white supremacy.
I was heartened to read about a protest and petty vandalism by a few hundred American communists and Antifa in Seattle, though. At least some people are true to their principles.
I agree with most of that – apart from being impressed with Joe’s speech. I wasn’t (see below). For me the highlight was Lady GaGa: her rendition of the US national anthem was surprisingly good. Conversely, songs by Jennifer Lopez and some C&W bloke were truly dreadful, as was an over-long piece by a ‘poet laureate’. The rest was largely wallpaper.
I only saw part of the speech on the BBC World evening news.
Thankfully, I had better things to do than watch J-Lo and Lady Gaga, though I’ve nothing against them as singers or as people.
Well, you didn’t miss anything, although, that said, I’m sure the BBC would edit events to fit their usual agenda.
If yer man cuts the mustard then it doesn’t matter which side he bats for quite frankly regardless but, as ever, and clichéd as it sounds, actions always speak louder than words.
I’m as intrigued and optimistic as anyone as to whether this superannuated leopard can finally change his spots.
In terms of everyday life, ex-presidents have just vanished into obscurity – maybe Carter had a life as an ex-P. Is Trump going to vanish? If Trump does not vanish, Biden’s role will change.
This will probably be remembered as “The Uncivil War” speech. He hit a home run there.
This speech is already being forgotten, except where it is being dissected-such as here, or praised in the sycophantic “press”.
I don’t know about you, but I’m outraged.
This will give Boris even greater encouragement to swamp us with woke policies.
i think we all know what this change will bring and none of it is good.
People compare Boris with Trump – if only.
The UK Liberal party stands no chance since the Tories stole their platform.
An interesting exercise in semantic analysis but the lived experience of the speech for many – perhaps most – listeners and viewers was of unrelieved tedium and platitude. Of course, few politicians can match a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, a Churchiill or, arguably, even a Reagan in either content or delivery. Certainly, Sleepy Joe can’t. There was nothing there that will ring down the years or decades and still inspire like Jack Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” or, of great significance today:”Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”.
Now there’s a long article damning with faint praise. Screw it, I agree. Drone away, Joe. Boredom sounds really good after four years of terminal excitement.
I don’t find any praise, even faint. It’s altogether written in the ironic mode. But it is the type of thing I used in freshman comp.
Joe Biden called for “Unity”. So did Adolph Hitler.
Joe Biden is the author of 1994 “three strikes” crime bill. This is one of the most hideous pieces of legislation since _allah_ ordered that blasphemers should be put to death.
By the bill, an individual can receive a very long prison sentence for a relatively minor criminal offence.
The wonderful thing that I felt and will continue to feel for at least another few weeks is to see that Biden has now replaced Trump. To see the Queen has replaced H&M, as working royals. So, to feel the chaos caused by the few and they replaced by positivity and it to hopefully continue through 2021 through all communication. Maybe that is going to far in a global waring of words. But to reply to the analysis, I would say the trick is that we need, “Clarity”, that is our saviour, so let’s keep talking more.
And that’s wonderful how exactly? Yesterday, three cities had rioting and attacks on Dem offices, from antifa types who do not share your sentiment, from types who want real-live purges and blood. Meanwhile, no rioting in DC yesterday, quite the contrast to four years ago when 200 people were arrested and a lot of damage was done by the oh-so-tolerant left.
The official left is communicating, all right. It has plenty to say about deprogramming and cleansing and other means of dealing with the tens of millions not in the Dem camp. Thus far, big tech has been conscripted to do what govt legally cannot. Talking is all well and good, but dialogue is a two-way event by definition, and it also involves listening.
Ah look on the bright side: least Sleepy Joe’s brother will get the contract to build the Concentration Camps. Maybe even Cokehead Hunter will set up a construction company and join in the fun – I mean profit.
There is no “soothing a volatile public” with this pedophile and his heels up w***e thief faux vp.
We hate them, we hate their CCP masters, and our particular rage is settled on the betrayers on our own side of the aisle who lied and used us for years, then stabbed us when the theft happened.
There is outrage in America. There is war.
Anyway, congratulations to Biden, Queen of the Universe, in the Excessive Machine. Looks very fetching in them thigh length boots. The sheer Welshness of it all.
Maybe you should get a ghostwriter…
Not a Durand Durand fan, I take it?
Thank you. Interesting analysis of Biden’s rhetoric. Revealing the structure behind his heartfelt emotion, and intention. To Borrow my own phrase or two, ‘if you don’t have a dream then how you gonna have a dream come true? Not fascisms centralised-globalised economy, misogynistic theocratic slavery, mafia style thuggish dictatorships. Dream on America.
Call me a cynic, but I’m still amazed after all these years, decades, centuries even, politicians still think they can get away with this middle distance staring, maybe I can see something you can’t quasi-prophetic bull, but get away with this middle distance staring, maybe I can see something you can’t quasi-prophetic bull they still apparently do.
I suppose it was too much to expect that an article on political rhetoric could have garnered comments on the same subject…
The article would serve for a lecture in a freshman composition class. And it does illustrate how artificial the address was. But, after all its real significance, along with all the flags, monuments, music, military, and high priests, was to serve as part of a ritual of the state religion. And the really meaningful significance of the event was that it took place within a cordon of razor wire and fully armed military, with zero worshippers in attendance, …altogether a powerful tableaux of a failed state.
Biden is Caesar Augustus, for those who know their history. But Caesar Augustus in a time of the internet. So he’ll probably end up like Julius Caesar.
Joe Biden in Lincoln’s line of descent in any way other than numerically is a stretch too far (every elastic has its breaking point). Biden’s talk of unity, apart from being mandatory inaugural boilerplate, was really about setting the Republicans up for blame when the usual and natural disunity manifests itself in the form of normal politics. The inauguration is a day out in fairyland for Americans and Joe wasn’t the man to break with tradition. How many Americans still buy this bla bla especially from someone of who they have so few expectations like Biden?
One day, someone will write an account of the 2020 election called ‘From MAGA to Gaga’.
Thanks for the article Sam although I found your explanation of the literary devices Biden used in his speech a little patronising. If we don’t know what something means, we can always look it up.
He means well and obviously has to roll out all the usual rhetoric in this traditional, predictable moment in American politics. The handing over of immense power from one person to another. The worry is that this is an old white man who believes that an old white God is looking out for him while he attempts to lead a fractured , disease ridden, economically floundering country into the promised land. Although he and his team will no doubt be more capable than the previous crowd, the outlook still comes across as too narrow and the rhetoric echoes with a hollow ring having been used too often before with little success.
What a weird, racist, altogether strange take on current events. I don’t know if “he means well”, but he has done well by himself and his now very wealthy family, somehow.
So let’s see. Moscow Mitch and JBiden came into the senate together, neither with wealth. 40 years later, Biden is worth $9 million, most from book sales (check his tax declarations, they’re all available), and MM worth… $35m, with no book. And now, ‘somehow’ you’re concerned about Biden’s money. Your bias needs some adjusting.
So, we are talking about Mitch?
the goalposts moved rather fast, didn’t they. But it’s your bias in question, not Sidney’s. No, it totes okay that Joe cashes in and that he uses his position to let his shiftless son cash in.
Well, we certainly just got a masterclass in shiftless grifters, and from what FACTS I know, Hunter’s still in the minors.
Will you please give us a reliable reference to Biden’s worth.
And don’t tell us I can find it via Google. I want to know where YOU found this information. If you can’t tell us, then it would be far safer for us to assume that you did not find it.
Okay, so they are both dodgy – reasonable assumption as American politics is as bent as a £3 note. Check his tax declarations? – You take naivety to a new level!
So, tell me, why do you give a free ride to Biden?
Perhaps your bias needs some adjusting.
So… what? Joe has Panamanian, Cayman, Cypriot and Lichtenstein accounts that he put together riding Amtrak between DC and Wilmington every day for 30 years. Sure fooled the IRS, hey! Brilliant trick. Now if he could only just get his son Hunter to stop dropping his laptop at a dodgy computer repair shop 3,000 miles from where he lives, and take all his personal highly incriminating unencripted information off first for crying out loud… well, then he could pull off the hidden billions thing!!
What are you babbling on about?
Look…. All Americans politicians are crooks – Everyone knows that except Joe’s cronies.
Thankfully, being British, I won 1st prize in the lottery of life and don’t have to give a pair of dingo’s kidneys about what goes on in a squalid third world country that can’t even hold an election without screwing it up.
PS: Don’t let Sleepy Joe near the nuclear button thingy, he might press it thinking that he was ordering a pizza.
What are you babbling on about?
Look….Americans politics is bent – Everyone knows that except you.
Thankfully, being British, I won 1st prize in the lottery of life and don’t give a pair of dingo’s kidneys about what goes on in a third world country that can’t even hold an election without fouling it up.
PS: Don’t let Sleepy Joe near the nuclear button thingy, he might press it thinking that he was ordering a pizza.
😉 My thought sare Similar!! How can the Party of JFK,RFK,FDR be reduced to babbling Globalist ‘Loon# Biden and nil Delegate harris?/
Almost as if he has been put in to give “old white men” a bad name.
Classic deflection. You should watch the hand not the mouth. Back in the office he signed 17 executive orders, beginning to roll back some of Trump’s mess. Such rapid action is not part of the usual tropery of inauguration day. As for the pageantry – I quite liked the poet.
Is the storm here yet?
Yep, the storms here alright. https://www.whitehouse.gov/…
Trump was a p***y grabber; Biden’s given the key to the schoolgirls lockerroom to the perverts
What a silly article. Dissecting a speech into technical jargon when that’s not the point. I imagine academics analyzing and debating the precise definition of ‘civil war’ whilst bombs go off about them.
You’re right. Last wedns. Qshaman & co. recalled nothing so much as the storming of the Bastille. And the siege image of the vacant capital grounds told much more eloquently than Biden the real message of the collapse of the American system of governance that he so “hallowed” to an empty mall.
Right now the think-tankers are feverishly at work desperately devising how to save their owners power with face. The plans will all be variants of military/police/intel camo’d with a veneer of “The Existential Threat” from the MAGA deplorables.
The inauguration was blessed with a wonderful performance by Lady Gaga of America’s ponderous national anthem and Amanda Gorman’s sage, inspirational, and revealing poetry. Biden will be well served if he puts Amanda on his staff of speech writers… Better to propel her to her dream of becoming President herself.
After cheating Bernie out of the nomination, using the Socialist national anthem sung by a ridiculously glam’d up LGBTQ pop artist was pretty offensive.