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We Caste You Out!

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 27, 2024

In the name of Orange Jesus

“FWIW I think this is gibberish, rather than a vow to end democracy. But the fact that I’m not sure speaks volumes,” tweeted media critic Dan Froomkin Friday night.

Donald Trump told the Turning Point USA Believers Summit on Friday that if only they would vote for him this time they would never have to vote again. He’d see to it, Trump promised. “We’ll have it fixed so good your not gonna have to vote.”

Even if there are still elections, there will be no point to voting. That’s how his dictator buddies do it. They will be “fixed” for good after he’s implemented Project 2025.

“Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Vice President Kamala Harris asked a campaign rally crowd in Milwaukee this week.

How many times must normal Americans hear Trump and his MAGA cult make their intentions plain before taking them seriously?

It’s bad enough that there is an informal Caste system in this unperfected land with “created equal” in its charter. Republicans have long sought to restructure the United States as government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry, the kind Americans shed blood to cast off in the Revolutionary War. But even that oh-so British model is too genteel for a MAGA Republican Party aroused by strongman Vladimir Putin’s Russian autocracy.

@thegoodliars Asked a Trump supporter if she’d vote for Putin over Biden. #fyp #rally #awkward #interview #biden #trump #ukraine ♬ original sound – The Good Liars

@thegoodliars This person would vote for Putin over Biden. #fyp #interview #northcarolina #hm ♬ original sound – The Good Liars

And. They. Vote. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. It’s their right in a country in which the consent of the governed matters. It’s just that if more of them vote than those of us committed to preserving our freedoms, it won’t.

The dog whistles are now fog horns. MAGA Republicans now have the wife of a Supreme Court justice auditioning for the role of Betsy Ross in the new Christian nationalist autocracy/thocracy. They mean to turn the very idea of America on its head.

Trump’s Christian nationalists will caste you out if you give them a chance.

Update: This clip from Ruth Ben-Ghiat in October.

‘The endgame of election denial is that we shouldn’t have elections’: Authoritarianism expert
ReaderAR pointed this out, so I went to C-Span to check the closed captioning. Welp, that IS what the closed captioining captured.

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Kamala Works The Eye

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 27, 2024

Democrats follow for once

The first week of Harris for President has been, as they say, lit.

“DAMN. This is how you slam Donald Trump,” tweeted Victor Shi, a Gen Z phenom from the Harris Youth Engagement Team. Shi boosted a campaign statement on Trump’s remarks to Turning Point USA Believers Summit on Friday in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“Tonight, Donald Trump couldn’t pronounce words, insulted the faith of Jewish and Catholic Americans, lied about the election (again), lied about other stuff, bragged about repealing Roe, proposed cutting billions in education funding, announced he would appoint more extremist judges, revealed he planned to fill a second Trump term with more criminals like himself, attacked lawful voting, went on and on and on, and generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant — let alone be President of the United States,” said James Singer.

“Someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant” is evocative in a way seldom seen in Democratic statements. “Criminals like himself” too. The gloves are off.

Shi had more:

As lit as the Harris team is, the Trump campaign is creepy and weird. A J.D. Vance-inspired meme as taken off as well. Senators Chris Murphy (CT) and Brian Schatz (HI) picked up that fumble and ran with it, spotlighting a “super weird” 2021 statement from Vance about Americans who have babies getting more votes.

https://x.com/JamesFallows/status/1816979213015994498

Is there an embarrassing photo of Vance in weird, white boots?

No representation without procreation!

The ReidOut blog noticed this Vance-ism on Thursday:

The clip is from a 2021 speech that Vance gave to a conservative organization called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. At one point, Vance offered up an unusual idea about voting:

Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power — you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic — than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.

The reason I said there’s more to the story than Vance’s disdain for childless people is this proposal also epitomizes the Republican Party’s growing embrace of openly antidemocratic policies.

“No representation without procreation!” snarked X user Abracadabrian.

In 2011, as Republicans systematically gerrymandered U.S. districts to concentrate their power and promoted voter suppression legislation aimed depressing the votes of youth and minorities, The Guardian noted this idea’s origins:

Szájer said he was inspired by the work of the American demographer Paul Demeny, who developed the concept in 1986. Under Demeny Voting, each parent is given half a vote for each child, permitting a split vote in the event that the parents have differing political loyalties.

However, to counter concerns about the Roma winning more votes, Szájer said in the Hungarian case, the move would have “permitted the passage of a law giving mothers the vote on behalf of a maximum of one child”.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” wrote George Orwell in 1945 in satirizing Stalin’s Russia. Can’t have undesirables sharing power on an equal footing with white Europeans now, can we?

Better yet, Trump suggested last night that voting itself will go away if he gets one more chance in the White House: “Four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.”

MAGA is not flying American flags upside down as a sign of distress. They are flying them to promote their plans for turning the very idea of America on its head.

Don’t sit back and let that happen to you. Don’t let them take your freedoms. Get busy. Harris has knocked Trump back on his heels. Don’t let him recover. Register. Vote Volunteer.

And meme the hell out of them.

We’re not going back!

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Friday Night Soother

Published by digby on July 26, 2024

Cheetah babies!

A  pair of inquisitive cheetah cubs take their first steps into public view  – in a moment of hope for the vulnerable species.

The adorable three-month-old cubs, born to mum Darcy at the award-winning Yorkshire Wildlife Park, represent a major advance for the conservation of cheetahs whose numbers have fallen to around 7,000 in the wild.

Darcy, four, and their father 13-year-old Brook moved to the park’s Cheetah Territory last year and set up home in the three reserves and two specially-designed houses as part of a European breeding project.

The cubs, the park’s first ever.  were nurtured by Darcy in the enclosure for three months but are now strong enough to be allowed out to  roam out across the 10,000 square metre reserve which is enriched with caves and grasslands.

We’re so pleased that our cubs are strong and healthy and ready to be released into the reserve where visitors will be able to see them properly for the first time,” said Dr Charlotte Macdonald, Director of Animals, at the park, near Doncaster.

The resort  partners  with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which has a mission to preserve cheetah eco systems with interventions that are environmentally sustainable, socially responsible and economically viable. 

Cheetahs are regarded as one of the oldest of the world’s big cat species and were considered sacred by the Egyptians. They can reach speeds of up to 75 mph for short periods, and can reach 60 mph in 3 seconds. 

But their numbers have dropped over the last 50 years and cheetahs have become extinct in 13 African countries due to poaching, loss of habitat and human-wildlife conflict. 

More at the link.

Elon Musk Is An Ultra-Trumper

Published by digby on July 26, 2024

A cold, self-centered monster

This just makes me sad — and mad. How could anyone treat their own child this way?

Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16. 

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said. 

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.” 

Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. 

“He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.” 

Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school. 

“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.” 

That’s the point.

The Border Is Not In Crisis

Published by digby on July 26, 2024

I know that goes against everything America believes in but it’s true:

The number of migrants unlawfully crossing the U.S. southern border has continued to drop markedly in July, nearing a threshold that would require officials to lift a partial ban on asylum claims enacted by President Biden, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News.

July is on track to see the fifth consecutive monthly drop in migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border and the lowest level in illegal immigration there since the fall of 2020, during the Trump administration, the internal Department of Homeland Security figures show.

In early June, President Biden invoked a far-reaching presidential authority to suspend the entry of most migrants entering the U.S. illegally, effectively shutting off access to the American asylum system outside of official ports of entry. 

Illegal border crossings — which were already falling before Mr. Biden’s action — plunged further after the order took effect, reaching a three-year low in June.

This is another bit of news that nobody seems to know about for some reason. In fact, it appears that most people think we are in the midst of a horrifying invasion and crime wave for some reason.

Also, despite Trump’s lies, Kamala Harris was not the “Border Czar”:

Harris was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy. Nor was she involved in overseeing law-enforcement efforts or guiding the federal response to the crisis. Her mandate was much narrower: to focus on examining and improving the underlying conditions in the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—which has been racked by decades of poverty, war, chronic violence, and political instability. The strategy relied on allocating billions for economic programs and stimulating private-sector investment in the region in hopes that these programs would ultimately lead fewer migrants to make the dangerous journey north

It was the first high-profile assignment in Harris’ tenure as Vice President, and it was an especially thankless one. At best, addressing the “push factors” that spur migration would lead to incremental improvements and take a generation to yield results. At worst, it would make Harris the face of the border crisis, one of the Biden administration’s biggest political vulnerabilities. “To the extent that this was a useful assignment, she did reasonably well in getting the private sector to invest in Central America,” says Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “But it was an assignment that could not produce results anytime soon.”

The so-called “root causes strategy” focused on improving economic and security conditions by creating jobs, combating corruption, improving human and labor rights, and reducing violence. Harris allocated funds for humanitarian relief from natural disasters, and directed more than 10 million COVID-19 vaccines to the Northern Triangle countries. She held bilateral meetings with the region’s leaders, as well as meetings with NGOs, business executives and human rights advocates. She worked with the U.S. Justice Department to launch an Anti-Corruption task force focused on prosecuting corruption cases with ties to the region, as well as Anti-Migrant Smuggling task forces in Mexico and Guatemala.

Most importantly, Harris spearheaded a public-private partnership that, as of March 2024, had secured commitments from major U.S. and multi-national companies to invest more than $5 billion in the region. The Vice President “put her name on the line with very serious senior CEOs and kind of created a brand appeal for Central America that didn’t exist,” says Ricardo Zúniga, who until recently served as the U.S. special envoy to Central America. 

Harris also spent time in Washington communicating with regional leaders. One tangible result, according to two former U.S. officials, was that it gave the U.S. the standing and relationships to help prevent Guatemalan prosecutors from overturning the results of last year’s presidential election, which was won by anti-corruption outsider Bernardo Arévalo. While delayed, the ultimately peaceful transition of power avoided the political instability that Biden Administration officials feared could cause a spike in migration. The U.S. applied public pressure through sanctions and visa restrictions on officials they accused of undermining the democratic process, as well as behind the scenes. Harris’s team was directly involved, especially her national security adviser Philip Gordon, who traveled to the region to push for a peaceful democratic transfer of power, according to the two former U.S. officials.

It was a thankless task but an experience that makes her more than prepared to handle the issue as President of the United States. So Trump can shut his piehole. His only answer is rounding up people and deporting them and building walls.

He’s Just Weird

Published by digby on July 26, 2024

So JD Vance is supposed to be the salt of the earth guy from Appalachia who dragged himself up by his tattered bootstraps to go to Yale, write a book and become a silicon valley sweetheart and senator. A true All-American icon.

Well, he’s actually a true weirdo, even aside from his shape shifting politics which are dizzying. Even when it comes to his own name he’s a real oddball:

The senator from Ohio introduced himself to the world in 2016 when he published his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” under the name J.D. Vance — “like jay-dot-dee-dot,” he wrote, short for James David. In the book, he explained that this was not the first iteration of his name. Nor would it be the last.

Over the course of his 39 years, Vance’s first, middle and last names have all been altered in one way or another. As Vance is being introduced to voters across the country as Donald Trump’s new running mate, his name has been the source of both curiosity and questions — including why he no longer uses periods in JD.

He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1984, his middle and last names the same as his biological father, Donald Bowman. His parents split up “around the time I started walking,” he writes. When he was about 6, his mother, Beverly, married for the third time. He was adopted by his new stepfather, Robert Hamel, and his mother renamed him James David Hamel.

When his mother erased Donald Bowman from his and her lives, the adoption process also erased the name James Donald Bowman from the public record. The only birth certificate for Vance on file at Ohio’s vital statistics office reads James David Hamel, according to information provided by the state. Beverly kept the boy’s initials the same, since he went universally by J.D., Vance explains in the book. He didn’t buy his mother’s story that he was named for his uncle David, though. “Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald,” he wrote.

Vance spent more than two decades as James David “J.D.” Hamel. It’s the name by which he graduated from Middletown High School, served in Iraq as a U.S. Marine (officially, Cpl. James D. Hamel), earned a political science degree at The Ohio State University and blogged his ruminations as a 26-year-old student at Yale Law School. Those facts are borne out in documentation provided by those entities upon request, or otherwise publicly available, and were confirmed by campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.

But the situation gnawed at him, particularly after his mother and adoptive father divorced.“I shared a name with no one I really cared about (which bothered me already), and with Bob gone, explaining why my name was J.D. Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments,” he writes in “Hillbilly Elegy.” “Yeah, my legal father’s last name is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see him. Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”

So he decided to change his name again, to Vance — the last name of his beloved Mamaw, the grandmother who raised him.It didn’t happen on his wedding day in 2014, as the book implies, but in April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale, Van Kirk said. It felt right to take the name of the woman who raised him before dying in 2005, as he was putting the struggles of his early life behind him and launching into this new phase.

“Throughout his tumultuous childhood, Mamaw — or Bonnie Blanton Vance — raised JD and was always his north star,” Van Kirk said in a statement. “It only felt right to him to take Vance as his last name.”Claiming the Vance name also served to tie JD more clearly to what he writes was “hillbilly royalty” on his grandfather’s side not long before he would release a book opining on hillbilly culture. A distant cousin to his Papaw, also named James Vance, married into the McCoy-hating Hatfield family and committed a murder that “kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history,” Vance wrote in his book,

I don’t believe a word of his excuses for all this ID changing. It’s obvious that this is a guy who is changing his identity like most people change their socks. He is a troubled person with some kind of burning ambition to be something other than what he is.

When you combine this with his other weird habits he seems like like a salt of the earth All-American boy that the Trump people thought they were getting and more like well … them. The whole Trump family is a bunch of phony, insecure narcissistic headcases. Also known as weirdos.

Making Politics Fun Again

Published by digby on July 26, 2024

The NY Times today has a nice piece about the “Kamala vibe shift” showing how people are getting excited about politics again. (How weird to have them speaking to non-Trump voters for a change.)

“It’s gone from the dread election to the hope election, overnight,” said Amanda Litman, who runs a group that recruits progressives to run for office.

Campaigns are not won and lost on vibes alone. But they can encourage voters to open their wallets and volunteer their time — and right now, the buoyant mood among Democrats is translating into early signs of strength for the campaign.

The Harris for President campaign has raised $130 million from mostly small donors in just a matter of days, while the high-dollar fund-raising world whirls to life. Democratic organizers are reporting a surge of interest from volunteers. And, yes, there are the memes, a sign of organic interest that the Biden campaign never mustered.

Kamala hype TikToks abound (which the Republicans are saying is nothing but Chinese propaganda) but the memes are everywhere. I don’t think I’ve seen this level of Democratic fun since 2008. And then there was still a lot of lingering resentment from the close primary. There’s none of that present in this one.

It’s tempting to be dismissive of all this as very, very uncool but as Jill Filipovic remains us in her great newsletter today, most Americans are uncool so don’t rain on their parade.

I hope she doesn’t mind that I post the whole thing because I think it’s important:

There’s a ton of energy around Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and at least some of what’s happening, is, to borrow from the kids, cringe. It’s cheesy or awkward or goofy or earnest. It’s thoroughly uncool. It’s things like a family band singing about JD Vance to the tune of an ABBA song. It’s an affinity-group call for white women where donations are solicited by imploring participants to “use your privilege for good.” It’s homemade coconut glasses at Harris rallies.Subscribe

Some of it is entirely bonkers, and a lot is extremely silly. Some of it is just imperfect (see, e.g., JD Vance saying that people without kids shouldn’t be able to vote, and then people who have faced fertility struggles speaking about how painful it is to hear that, and then people correcting them that actually it’s bad to restrict votes from non-parents no matter what the reason). It is only going to get cringier.

But here is the task: If we want to beat Trump, it has to be all hands on deck — and hands off the cynicism and cool-teen posturing and one-upmanship that so often characterizes Democratic infighting, and made Democratic politics so insufferable and toxic in 2016.

Because you know who is extremely cringe and very not cool? The average American voter.

And you know who really wants to vote for Kamala Harris? Black voters, and Black women in particular. Latino voters, and Latinas in particular. MSNBC moms and dads, and the moms in particular. Idealistic young people, and young women in particular. Women who cried when Hillary lost and wore pussy hats to the Women’s March.

When people are this hyped up about something, they’re going to express it in ways that may not appeal to a too-online 27-year-old in Bushwick or a gender studies PhD candidate in Berkeley or to me personally. I don’t mean that to denigrate too-online Brooklyn 20-somethings (of which I have been one) or gender students PhD candidates (of which I could have been one). I do mean it to say that it’s actually good if political campaigns appeal to normal people, and it’s bad to shame normal people for liking normie things. It’s also good to remember that not everything is for everyone; just because a particular argument or frame or response doesn’t speak to you, or leaves you out, doesn’t mean it doesn’t appeal to some constituency of voters.

In other words, keep the snark to the group chat.

And certainly resist the temptation to use someone else’s well-meaning but imperfect organizing or commentary as a platform to boost your own ego or demonstrate that you are actually a person who Gets It. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this? What point am I making? Is the person I’m criticizing actually doing any harm, or are they generally doing good, just in a way that doesn’t really appeal to me or is missing something? Does anyone else remember that much-photographed sign held up at the Women’s March that said something like, “Don’t Forget: White Women Voted for Trump”? Don’t be that person. I am sure that person felt very good about themselves. But the reality is that the white ladies of the Women’s March were not Trump voters. Neither are the MSNBC moms donating to Harris, or the college-educated feminists living in big American cities, or the Boomer dads texting their kids the anti-Vance ABBA parody. The Bernie Bros who loved to roll their eyes at the middle-aged wine moms may have made their podcast subscribers laugh, but they weren’t making any converts.

Shaming people out of organizing, or even out of their enthusiasm, does not help any cause. If you want to keep Trump out of the White House, it’s worth asking what you can add and where you can contribute — and whether picking apart what other people are doing is really a good use of your time.

(Be as critical as you want on text, we all have to vent).

Trump voters have shown that there’s power in political fun. I don’t understand their particular version of it with the weird clothes and the cheering for mass deportation but I guess that’s just their jam. I think Democrats should be able to have fun with politics too or least be allowed to be earnest about them without being slammed by their own allies. It’s a big country. Let people fly their freak flags with joyful abandon if that’s what it takes to defeat fascism.

And personally, I think that family band JD Vance sen-up is one of the most droll things I’ve seen in a long time. Lol.

Kryptonite To MAGA’s Hate

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 26, 2024

Maybe misogyny doesn’t sell?

Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast:

In recent days, Donald Trump and MAGA media figures have ramped up the attacks on Kamala Harris’s laugh, her personality, and her temperament. That’s vile stuff, but MAGA’s strategy also suggests an inability to entertain a remarkable possibility: What if Harris’s laugh and energy are actually well suited to this moment in American politics? Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of the progressive strategy group Way to Win, has been advising Democrats to respond aggressively to racist and sexist attacks on Harris. We talked to Ancona about whether Harris’s temperament might prove to be kryptonite to MAGA’s negativity and hate. Listen to this episode here.

Ancona moderated a panel at Netroots-Baltimore this month: Amplify: Getting Louder to Win in 2024 (video). One finding to note: to get more young people to turn out, younger candidates need to be prominent in our interactions with voters. They need to see younger faces reflected in the Democrats’ 2024 slates.

Several of NC’s statewide candidates fit that bill. These three are all roughly 40.

NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is running to retain her seat on the GOP-dominated court. She’s just over 40.

Make sure younger voters know Democrats are advancing candidates who look like them, including the youngest state chair in the country. Anderson Clayton is 26.

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Fighting for the future

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 26, 2024

Is our Democrats learning?

If you haven’t seen the first Kamala Harris ad that dropped Thursday, here ’tis.

Both with the Beyoncé soundtrack and her “fighting for the future” framing, Harris is defining freedom our way while reclaiming it from conservatives who wrap themselves in it while stomping on the freedoms of everyone not in their MAGA tribe.

Claiming freedom, that all-American value, is a move on which Anat Shenker-Osorio has insisted for years. It’s finally sinking in.

Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink observes:

Harris frames the election as the freedom to choose a future — following the advice messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been talking to us about all year. This isn’t about the narrow notion of freedom that’s gotten currency on the right, the sort of freedom that’s about retreating from public life and obligations, even if it is wrapped in the flag. It’s about coming together to work for a bigger, broader sense of freedom that includes all of us — the idea that the flag actually should stand for.

Harris needs to brand herself before Republicans have a chance to “but her emails” her, so this ad is an important first salvo.

The contrast with Trump and Vance is an important feature here. For Democrats to be the good guys, there must be bad guys. And, brother, are these some bad guys.

Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka on Kamala Harris on July 9: “She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz (D) describes them “weird” and Gorka as “a Bond villain” out of Central Casting.

Trump and #Project2025 plan “to return America to a dark past.” But Gorka demonstrates that they don’t want to take America back to the 1950s. They never left.

Guess what? We’re not going back!

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Cincinnatus and Catiline

Published by digby on July 25, 2024

David Frum with a bit of the classics explaining Biden and Trump. It’s good:

Two political myths inspired the dreams and haunted the nightmares of the Founders of the American republic. Both these foundational myths were learned from the history and literature of the ancient Romans.

Cincinnatus was the name of a man who, the story went, accepted supreme power in the state to meet a temporary emergency and then relinquished that power to return to his farm when the emergency passed. George Washington modeled his public image on the legend of Cincinnatus, and so he was depicted in contemporary art and literature—“the Cincinnatus of the West,” as Lord Byron praised him in a famous poem of the day.

Against the bright legacy of Cincinnatus, the Founders contrasted the sinister character of Catiline: a man of depraved sexual appetites who reached almost the pinnacle of power and then exploited populist passions to overthrow the constitution, gain wealth, and pay his desperately pressing debts. Alexander Hamilton invoked Catiline to inveigh against his detested political adversary, Aaron Burr:

He is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandisement … If he can, he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure to himself permanent power and with it wealth … He is truly the Cataline of America.

President Joe Biden’s speech last night adapted the story of Cincinnatus: “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” he said. “That includes personal ambition.” By presenting the next election as a stark choice between, on the one side, “honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice, and democracy” and, on the other side, the opposites of those things, Biden cast his chief political adversary in the ancient role of Catiline.

Biden’s act of renunciation gives power to his words of denunciation. By demonstrating that he cared about something higher than personal ambition, the president became more credible when he accused his chief opponent of caring for nothing other than personal ambition. By surrendering the power that he’d once hoped to keep, Biden condemned by contrast the predecessor who clung to the power he’d lost. Biden’s July 24 rebuked Trump’s January 6.

The names and stories of Cincinnatus and Catiline are no longer well remembered. But their symbolism survives even after the details have blurred: self first versus country first; appetite versus conscience; ego versus law.

Indeed they do.

The founders are screaming from the graves. Let’s hope this country hears them.