But not just in foreign affairs
Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech Thursday night is yet another example of how his life and his faith have shaped him. This is not going to be an apologia for his failings, but rather a review of whether, despite Americans’ chest-thumping about their faith, they really mean what they say.
Biden does. “Biden’s throwback, almost corny optimisim about the country he’s spent his life serving feels authentic. When he says he’s not kidding, he’s not kidding,” I wrote just yesterday. When he said last night, “We’re facing an inflection point in history,” he says it with an almost George Bailey sincerity.
He emphasized “the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity.” Biden called out recent waves of antisemitism and Islamophobia at home.
We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must without equivocation denounce antisemitism. We must also without equivocation denounce Islamophobia.
And to all you hurting, those of you who are hurting, I want you to know I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all America. You’re all America.
Biden drew a quick parallel between Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine and Hamas butchery in Israel. He spent much of his brief address reminding Americans, members of Congress, and NATO allies that their interests and security are bound up with Ukraine’s as well as with non-NATO Israel’s.
American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.
America cannot walk away, Biden insisted. “We are the essential nation.”
Biden’s unflagging faith in the American idea is perhaps out of step with the times, like George Bailey’s struggle to provide a better life for the good people of Bedford Falls. Red-hatted Donald Trump fans want to see America made “great again,” but “again” feels less like Bedford Falls than Pottersville. Trump, after all, began his dubious business career as a slumlord. Trump is Potter.
Amanda Marcotte writes:
… President Joe Biden and the now criminally indicted leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have demonstrated very different models of leadership. The stark differences between the two leaders are another example of how America’s democracy crisis is not “just” a political problem: It is a moral and cultural sickness that is far greater than any one political leader, political party, or political movement.
[…]
In a time not too long ago, America’s mainstream political leaders, on both sides of the partisan divide, followed an informal rule that politics and partisanship stopped at the ocean. In the Age of Trump and ascendant neofascism, that rule has been jettisoned by the right wing because getting political power at any cost with the goal of ending America’s multiracial pluralistic democracy is more important than standing in unity in a time of crisis.
David Rothkopf told Salon Biden and Trump simply are not comparable:
Joe Biden is a good man, a dedicated and effective public servant who’s trying to do a good job, who believes in our institutions, who believes in our values, who believes in alliances, who believes people are fundamentally good, and who is the kind of person Donald Trump thinks is a sucker. Donald Trump is a bad man; he is all about himself. He doesn’t care. He has no moral code whatsoever. He doesn’t believe in the rule of law. He doesn’t believe in the Constitution. He doesn’t believe in American values.
Marcotte cites several recent polls investigating Americans’ ostensible values. Trump supporters view the twice-divorced, alleged tax cheat with a history of cheating on his wife, a man facing 91 felony charges including for fomenting a violent insurrection, as more moral than evangelical former Vice President Mike Pence.
Racism, white racial resentment, hostile sexism, and other forms of prejudice and hatred in the form of social dominance behavior and authoritarianism have also played a powerful role in why Republicans and other “conservatives” have embraced the moral corruption of Trumpism and American neofascism. This is channeled through a yearning for a return to “the good old days” and “traditional values” and “Making America Great Again”.
[…]
With their embrace of Trumpism, American neofascism, and hostility to real democracy more broadly, have the MAGA people and other members of the right-wing just forgotten basic standards of human decency, morality, and good leadership? Or have they instead actively chosen Donald Trump and what he represents knowing how destructive and evil such forces are because the power is intoxicating and a way to get what they want in an America they feel increasingly hostile to and alienated from – even if that means ending democracy?
I’m pretty sure both are rhetorical questions and not mutually exclusive.
In the Looking Glass World of Trumpism, morality and American values spelled out in the Declaration are filligree on a pig. There are no American flags big enough to conceal the contempt MAGAstan holds for the Norman Rockwell vision of America Joe Biden holds dear if “created equal” and “and justice for all” stand proudly at its heart.
America is indeed at an inflection point in history. But American foreign policy is only one facet.