The Philadelphia Mockery

The speech by Biden on Thursday in Philadelphia has been vilified and denounced on the right and increasingly been criticized even on the left.  Biden has claimed to want to be a uniter but he has governed divisively.  With this speech, though, he does seem to have taken a step towards uniting the left and the right in the mutual repulsion to its content and imagery.

I did not listen to the speech.  I rarely listen to political speeches.  All I am responding to is the response to the speech.

Both right and left seem to be condemning the use of the Marines as part of the imagery as inappropriate with a political speech and inconsistent with past norms.  

Most, primarily on the right but many on the left as well, are condemning the severe partisanship and othering of the speech.  That Republicans and MAGA voters are apparently a threat to democracy seems to have been a key theme.  

And everyone hates the authoritarian imagery of the event.  I'll come back to that.

Ann Althouse, an academic and likely slightly left-of-center, was disgusted by the speech.  From Biden's disturbing and incoherent speech by Ann Althouse.  The whole piece is worth reading.

I greatly prefer normal, mainstream politics, and that's why this rhetoric bothers me so much. He's passionate about not being passionate, fiery about avoiding fire. He's demonizing so many people, and I'm not sure why. It's stated in the abstract. We all like some personal rights and not others and have different ideas about the scope of those rights. We all like the pursuit of justice, but we have different ideas about what counts as justice. And what about "the rule of law"? Ask a Critical Race Theory person, and you may hear that the rule of law is white supremacy. It's a matter of diversity and debate. Can we have this debate? Or is an authoritarian leader going to disqualify all participants who don't accept his idea of personal rights, justice, and the rule of law? His version constitutes "the very soul of this country"? 

There are far more Americans, far more Americans from every background and belief, who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.

His version of the soul of America represents what "far more" Americans think, so — what? — screw those other people? Something like 47% of voters voted for Trump, but even if the Trump voters were more dramatically overwhelmed by throngs of more "normal" people, they are still part of the population. Or maybe it's not about excluding everyone who's not in the majority. Maybe it's about rejecting them because they have "extreme MAGA ideology." What is "extreme MAGA ideology"? Desire for a secure border? Pro-life? Really, what are the elements that Biden envisions as not worthy of debate but justifying denouncement as not normal and not mainstream?

Across the board, other than dyed-in-the-wool partisan loyalists, everyone seems to have been disturbed by the authoritarian and fascist vibes of both the speech and the imagery.

I saw this photo very soon after the event and was confident it must be a photo-shop.  It was so unflattering and pushed so many buttons on communism, fascism, and authoritarianism, I just assumed that it must have been edited.

Click to enlarge.

No.  It was not edited.  This was the image they intended to portray.  

Incredible Nuremberg echoes.

My first thought was, How did this happen?  A lot of time and money and effort go into planning presidential events.  You typically assume that the impressions made were intended to be made.  But surely that wasn't the case here?

Sure, there are occasional missteps such as the George W. Bush Mission Accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln after their ten month deployment to the Persian Gulf as part of the Iraq War.  The ship requested a banner, Mission Accomplished, referring to their ten month voyage.  The sign was hung in the background behind the president when he made a speech on the aircraft carrier.  His speech did not mention Mission Accomplished.  

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld removed any references in the speech to the Iraq War being concluded.  The sign was supposedly referencing either the conclusion of the ten month mission or the conclusion of the initial invasion of Iraq.  

None-the-less, despite the words in the speech and despite the sign referencing the ship's mission, the visual of the President giving a speech in front of a Mission Accomplished sign was sufficiently compelling that it was worth easily two or four weeks of news coverage - the message mooted about was that the White House was being naively optimistic about the conclusion of the war.  

It was detailed event planning with an uncoordinated misstep which lead to useful partisan messaging; for the other side.

As noisy as that incident was, it holds no candle to the Philadelphia event.  

My first thought was that the early photos I saw must have been photoshopped.  When it turned out that the images were unedited, my second thought was - Poor light technician/advisor.  He's going to get an earful.  And my third thought was - How on earth did they let this happen?  Both the content of the speech and the visuals that went with it?

Holding aside what both the speech and staging might tell us about the vision of the White House Administration, there is still the marketplace of ideas where Americans can and do express themselves in humorous and/or mocking ways.  And boy did they respond to the Philadelphia speech.  I caught the Nuremberg visual allusion on my own.  How could anyone miss it?  I did not catch but then did recognize the allusion to the Star Wars mythology.  Likewise with the Temple of Doom allusion.  I completely missed the Seinfeld connection.

Ordinary citizens made a lot of humorous references which would likely never have occurred to me.  Mockery is a good sign of a bad speech and a healthy market of ideas and speech.

 

Click to enlarge.