A negative emotional response.

From Biden has gall to tell us his ‘patience is wearing thin’ by Howie Carr.  Its just an opinion piece and my eye is caught more by the headline than the content.

In a number of conversations since Biden's speech on Thursday, I have seen and heard two distinct responses, both bipartisan.

Independents and Republicans, with a healthy addendum of Democrats, dislike the policy implications.  It seems to me that most people feel like this is a bridge too far in centralizing power in the nation from individuals to members of the White House.  That Biden is wanting to make decisions he is not authorized to make.  

These conversations are intellectual, calling on history, historical norms, political theory, governance practice, epidemiology, etc.  They think his proposed actions are wrong on a multitude of reasoned and evidentiary grounds.

But the second response is, to me, more interesting and somewhat bifurcated.  Republicans and Independents react viscerally to the tone of Biden's remarks.  Especially that comment that his patience is wearing thin.  

It is belittling and galling at the same time.  No adult wishes to be treated as a child.  Their anger is fueled by the patronizing tone, by the awareness that Biden is way out over his skis in terms of his actual authority, and by the absurdity that someone can be pretending to take this position while claiming any sort of knowledge or any sort of respect for his fellow citizen. 

In repudiating federalism and repudiating the three branches model of governance in his speech, Biden unnecessarily personalized his argument.  Americans seem to be reacting emotionally to the insults which were so freely dished out in the speech.

The response of those with whom I have spoken who are of the Democratic persuasion is even more interesting.   Unlike the policy response, which they don't like but which they will try and defend, in the case of the tone, they won't defend it.  When someone points out the implications of my "patience is wearing thin" they try and move the conversation back to policy or to something else.  They don't defend the tone and the implied mindset of the tone.

All this is based on at best half a dozen conversations, a couple lengthy, most briefer.  Hardly a random sample nor a large sample.

I find it interesting, though, how much the speech seems to have triggered an emotional response, a negative emotional response, independent of the merits of the policies.  

There were a couple of other notes which I hear people reacting to viscerally.  One was the distinct effort to demonize a minority (the vaccine hesitant) and make them a scape goat.  Closely related was the effort to set American against American over personal choices.  Finally, some seem to have negatively responded to the effort to make individuals directly responsible for the deaths of others.  

But all those emotional responses to the speech take a back seat to that grating "my patience is wearing thin."  That really seems to get people's dander up.

Carr's piece is just a vituperative polemic but he does make one interesting point which I have not seen made elsewhere.  

“This is not about freedom or personal choice.”

That’s what Dementia Joe said. This came a couple of hours after his vice president, Cacklin’ Kamala Harris, wearing an absurd mask, spoke about the beauty of choice, by which she meant abortion.

“When people,” she read from her teleprompter, “are able to make choices without government interference for themselves in terms of their well-being and the well-being of their families in consultation with whomever they may choose, we are a stronger society.”

I had not realized Harris had juxtaposed such a contrasting and contradictory message so close in time to Biden's speech.  Presumably just an absence of coordination of messaging within in the White House but that sure is a jarring contradiction between the President and Vice President.