How does Biden expect this to end? Does he really think that using the office of the president to re-christen an entire group of Americans as extremists whose existence “threatens the very foundations of our republic” will somehow compel them to see the light, as it were? To step out of their red-colored haze, and vote Democrat? To suddenly reconsider the Senate run of failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin or to pour one out for future MSNBC contributor Liz Cheney?
Or by summoning the same language used to justify suppressing the speech rights of Americans in World War I, is he laying the predicate for something much darker? …
In tagging the 78 million people who voted for Trump as akin to domestic terrorists, Biden’s speech serves two codominant roles: to label half the country as a threat and to use this designation as a bat signal to the institutional arbiters of social, cultural, and corporate America to disassociate, shun, shame, and reprimand. And, critically, do it all with the formal imprimatur of the White House.
After all, Biden’s address wasn’t a campaign speech. Incredibly, it was pitched — and covered by corporate media unquestioningly — as a policy address.
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