“Until this moment … I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness … Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Those words rang out across the land as the emblem of an era when American individuals, industries, and institutions were openly accused by a prominent elected official and his cohorts of promoting or suborning treason. Now consider the repeated and already infamous incendiary rhetoric of Joe Biden about MAGA Republicans, labeling them semi-fascists and lawless, violent extremists.
Can you actually distinguish between a president of the United States unleashing a slanderous verbal assault on tens of millions of his constituents, and the deeply divisive and destructive accusations of one Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s? If anything, the bully pulpit of the president, who unlike a senator represents the entire country, makes Biden’s rants even more damaging to the esprit de corps of a nation more divided by the day.
The pronounced similarity between these two demagogues, and the one that ultimately defines their shared mission, is labeling their enemies as un-American. Biden did not use McCarthy’s exact word, but the message was equally clear. And while it has long since become evident that communists had in fact infiltrated elements of our government and society as the Soviet Union consolidated its power after the fall of Hitler, the breadth of McCarthy’s crusade damaged or destroyed all in his path. Communists were hiding under every bush. Just like MAGA Republicans.
MAGA Or McCarthy?
Quick quiz: Who said the following, Joe Biden or Joseph McCarthy?
“The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer.”
Joseph McCarthy (Getty Images)
While you have likely concluded that such was stated by the late senator, you would be excused for believing such demagoguery came from the mouth of the sitting president. After all, how different is McCarthy’s rant about traitors, really, from Biden’s assertion that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic”? That is pure McCarthyism.
After effectively condemning tens of millions of his fellow Americans as a threat not to Biden’s way of thinking but to democracy itself, even that famed Washington newspaper with deep ties to the left could not help but see the danger in the inflammatory rhetoric employed by this president at the very cradle of liberty, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall: “Mr. Biden was wrong to conflate upholding the rule of law with his own partisan agenda, which he called ‘the work of democracy.’” How exactly can anyone expect people condemned as traitors to willingly participate in constructive political activity and discussions about the future of the nation -- at a time when America is actively and wrenchingly dividing in two? Is Biden trying to bait MAGA Republicans -- that would be the overwhelming majority of the GOP -- into an extreme reaction once his administration’s increasingly inevitable indictment of Donald Trump finally comes down?
How does Biden square the record 19 times he used the word “unity” or the equivalent in his inaugural address with publicly writing off half the country as reprobates? That speech on the first day of his presidency was the head fake of all head fakes, as he has now become the most divisive president in our lifetime, if not in all of American history. And by the way, for those who would point to the bombastic and ofttimes reckless rhetoric of Trump, there is one yuge difference: Trump condemned politicians and public figures but never voters. Biden has all but labeled the millions who voted for Trump as traitors. And he will never be able to take it back.
So our widely unpopular chief executive has rolled the dice, staking the health of the nation on scaring the bejesus out of the American people for the sake of political expedience. He is willing to slander millions for short-term political gain, at the expense of even pretending to unite the country. He is begging the most gullible voters to believe that a MAGA extremist is, well, hiding under every bed -- or even, God forbid, out in the open -- ready to run roughshod on your freedoms and democracy itself.
After McCarthy had charged that the State Department was infested with enemies of the state, President Harry Truman remarked, “This is the first time in my experience … that I ever heard of a Senator trying to discredit his own Government before the world.” Similarly, there is no precedent for what Biden has now done. Never in our history has a president slandered millions of innocent American citizens -- until now. The question is, how will Joe Biden reap the coming whirlwind?
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