The 21st Century's Most Malignant Legacy?

This past Tuesday (Feb. 7, 2023) President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. delivered his second State of the Union (SOTU) address before a joint session of Congress. Depending on which side of the Congressional House of Worship you occupied, you were either witness to a political chess master easily parrying the jabs and overhand (far) rights of a bunch of punch-drunk amateurs, or cheering on the manhandling of a WOKE-supporting, mentally unstable octogenarian by a courageous group of young Republicans who understand that “there are no rules in a knife fight” (Yes, this is of course a famous line from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which the likes of Marjorie ‘Cruella Deville’ Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and the rest of the Hole-in-the Head Gang have, in all likelihood, never heard of.)

For proof of this bipolar analysis of last Tuesday’s SOTU, all one needed to do was catch the “post-game” recaps provided by either MSNBC and CNN on the sensible middle, or Fox News and OAN (One America News) on the freaky far right. To watch and listen to both would give one the impression that there were actually 2 totally different realities surrounding the President’s speech; one with heroes (and heroines) sitting on either side of the aisle telling nothing but the truth (i.e. that MAGA Republicans are on record as wanting to cancel both Social Security and Medicare), the other totally incapable of anything but utter dishonesty, putting masks of incomprehension on their faces and shouting out “LIAR! YOU LIE.” While watching all this take place, I was reminded of something I read long ago: “Never attempt to destroy someone else’s life with a lie when yours can be destroyed with the truth.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor “Cruella Deville” Greene (R-GA)

I for one gave President Biden’s State of the Union address an “A.” (Personally, I have never given any student an ““A+” and certainly don’t believe that there should be any G.P.A. higher than 4.0.) He was everything a POTUS should be: warm, upbeat, unflappable, occasionally showing that Biden 20 megawatt smile, humorous when called for, and above all, presenting a full-bodied, well-conceived legislative wish-list with a minimum of ho-hum political bromides. One of the longest-lived politicians in American history (36 years as a Senator, 8 years a Vice President and now 2 years as POTUS), Joe Biden understands better than most the dignity demanded of his office, as well as knowing how to handle himself in front of a camera, and how to deflect a political haymaker with extraordinary éclat (striking effect). He is, in brief, everything his predecessor was not. Unlike '45, he doesn’t affix nasty nicknames to his political foes, nor carry himself about like a deranged cult master. He really, truly believes in working across the aisle (note that was he who initiated the handshake with Speaker McCarthy) and is a gentleman.

Sara Huckabee Sanders, the newly-elected Governor of Arkansas was, against all reason, chosen to give the response to the State of the Union . . . historically, a position which adds next to nothing to a politician’s c.v. Sanders was likely chosen for two, perhaps three reasons: first, she is 40 years old where President Biden is twice her age; second, she is a woman . . . a demographic which the Republicans are seeing slip through their fingers in the post Roe v. Wade era; and third, she can sling red meat to the MAGA base with the best of them. And if Donald Trump faces a large field of Republican office holders in the 2024 primaries, he’s going to have to capture every last MAGA vote in America . . . that’s where Sanders likely comes in.

In her 20-minute rebuttal, the former Presidential press secretary painted a dystopian portrait of the country leaning heavily into Republican culture war issues and accusing Biden of pursuing “woke fantasies.” “While you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,” said Sanders, the former White House press secretary. “Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight.” She didn’t mention Trump by name, which to the base, is tantamount to a preacher delivering an impassioned Sunday sermon without once mentioning Jesus. Instead, she embraced conservatives’ fights against the way race is taught in public school. She called Biden’s administration “completely hijacked by the radical left.”

“The dividing line in America is no longer right or left,” she said. “The choice is between normal or crazy,” she said. Democrats made much of that line, giving it full-throated support while endlessly running video captures to prove the point that its the Republicans who are the crazy ones . . . Indeed, this line may go down in history as the 2022 equivalent of Senator Marco Rubio reaching for a bottle of water during his 2013 response to President Obama’s SOTU.

In other words, Governor Sanders, like the Republican’s Capitol Hill “Crazy Caucus” are planning on running (and winning) in 2024 on the lies and mistruths of the past many years . . . likely their most malignant legacy to America. Lies and mistruths have become so endemic to politics and society in general - thanks in part to the growth and omnipresence of social media and cable “news” outlets, and in part to the moral albinism of its most hypocritical practitioners - that it’s become neigh on impossible to separate the wheat of truth from the chaff of mendacity. For far too many, that which goes against their grain is the product of “fake news.” This is incredibly dangerous for the future of civilization. When lies become nothing more than a commodity to be sold under the brand name “truth,” then our republic - let alone civilization itself - is definitely imperiled and likely subject to autocratisation.

It never ceases to amaze me how much trash and dishonest bloviating a goodly segment of the public is willing to accept as the god’s honest truth. A few examples: going into the 2020 election, a photo was posted on Facebook claiming that “Joe Biden lives in the biggest mansion in his state and just bought another mansion in Washington, D.C.” It was quickly shared more than 1,000 times and became “a well-known fact” shortly thereafter. Stuff and nonsense! Delaware is the ancestral home of the DuPont family . . . ergo, no one has ever - or shall ever - possess a residence larger than theirs. The Winterthur Estate could be considered Delaware's largest mansion. The house was originally built in 1839 but has been enlarged considerably over the years. Henry Francis du Pont renovated the building between 1929 and 1931, resulting in a 175-room mansion sitting on 2,500 acres. This estate was turned into a museum in 1951, however, so some may not consider it to be the "largest mansion" in Delaware.

The Du Pont family built another massive property in Delaware in the early 1900s. While the Nemours Mansion dwarfs the properties owned by Biden at 47,000 sq. ft. (compared to 7,000 for the 2 Biden properties), this property, too, no longer serves as a single-family residence and therefore may not be an applicable comparison.

Then there is the entire universe of Hunter Biden tales. Depending on the source of your news, the president’s son made anywhere between $45,000 and $83,677 per month for a position on the board of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019 - a time when his father was V.P. through the beginning of his presidential campaign. Recently, rocker Ted Nugent (“The Motor City Madman”) posted a Facebook meme falsely insinuating that Hunter’s payments from the company ended with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then there is Fox’s Tucker Carlson who issues negative reports on President Biden’s profligate son so often, that somehow he has forgotten the days when he actually asked Hunter for his help in getting his son into Georgetown University, including writing a letter of recommendation. And by the way, why hasn’t anyone suggested looking into all the money the Trump and Kushner families made during the time ‘45 was in office? What Jared and Ivanka pulled in in a single year would have taken Hunter nearly 640 years to make. (And this does not include Jared’s $1.3 billion loan from the Saudis . . . )

One of the first items on the House Republican’s agenda in this new congress is the impeachment of President Biden, based largely on the many so-called corruptions of his son. Indeed, Hunter is about to become the “Hillary Clinton Benghazi Hearings” of the 118th Congress. Many will recall that Congressional Republicans spent more than 2 years and $7 million looking for something - anything - which would lay guilt at the feet of the former Secretary of State in the death of Chris Stevens, the American Ambassador to Libya. What they were hoping for, of course, was an indelible stain on her at the beginning of the 2016 presidential election cycle. After 6 hearings, they issued their 800-page report; it landed with a thud. And yet, to this very day, there are those Republican House members who want to reopen the Benghazi probe. And so do their most hypnotized followers who, to this day, “know for a fact” that Secretary Clinton was guilty of murder.

As Mark Twain (or Winston Churchill) once noted, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Or better still:

Lies are like a pain killer; it gives instant relief, but has lethal side effects forever.