Joe Biden’s Bread And Circus–Throwing Conservatives To The Lions

No body pays much attention to Joe Biden these days.  He is still the puppet of his progressive puppeteers, strings pulling his smile into place, giving his arms bravado and insistence and animation to a character which without strings, ropes, and pulleys would be an old man looking for his car.  

His ratings have gone up, but that is because no thanks to him gas prices have moderated, inflation seems to have plateaued, and COVID in retreat; but most of America does not want to see any more of him after one term, and the American electorate is growing increasingly unhappy over his policies to open the border to illegal immigrants, cancel billions of dollars of student debt, pour emotional money into a losing war in Ukraine,  and perhaps worst of all champion radical racial and gender policies. 

The mid-term elections (November 2022) are approaching, Republicans showing strength in many crucial electoral battlegrounds, and Democrats are worried that their far Left, radical woke agenda might lose them both the House and the Senate.  So not surprisingly Biden’s script-writers have turned to Rome for inspiration.  

The Left’s orgy of Trump-hating, a four-year long tearing of flesh, blood and guts, and political savagery helped the ill-equipped, aged, and unprepared Biden to the Oval Office.  It was Trump-hatred that elected Biden, not Biden himself; so it is with glee that his handlers propped him up in Philadelphia for an epic anti-MAGA (Make America Great) speech, one full of personal invective and inspired by the same bilious hatred spewed by Democrats during the Trump years.  

Speaking in a blood-red, intimidating, setting, deliberately menacing, and reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s canny use of iconography (flags, military presence, light and shadow), Biden said:

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country…

MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live, not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies. But together, together, we can choose a different path. We can choose a better path forward to the future, a future of possibility, a future to build a dream and hope, and we’re on that path moving ahead…

MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies. Lies told for profit and power.

Standing against a hellish blood-red background, in a very dystopian-looking background, the President became a caricature, a sci-fi figure out of some planetary evil empire.  The whole enterprise was one of impossible imagery, even more impossible rhetoric, and the last hurrah of a man whose shills, claques, and handlers became a nasty circus clown.

The Left of course gushed with praise.  Biden had finally found his voice, his spirit, and his energy.  He finally and once and for all called out Trumpism and the madness of the conservative Right for what it is – a fascist, racist, traitorous mob of thugs.

The January 6 assault on the Capitol was just what progressives had been waiting for – an undeniable, irrevocable physical expression of radical Right hatred for America and civil values – and by putting Trump front and center in its planning and execution, they could once and for all bury the man forever.

The January 6 experience made an all-out attack on political conservativism fair game.  Although Biden suggested unconvincingly that MAGA (insurrectionist Republicans) members did not represent the Republican party, the claim that they were was obvious.  In a display of classic demagoguery, Biden warned all viewers that conservatives were the very vicious, anti-social, dangerous people he was talking about.  Anyone voting Republican in the upcoming elections, and anyone not voting for the party of decency, justice, and fair play would be sorry.

Solidly liberal, pro-Biden neighborhoods turned out for block parties, happy moments of standing on the side of good, the right side, among likeminded men and women of peace and good will.  MAGA seditionists had been called out in a national ‘J’accuse!’ and could never find cover again.  The forces of right were now mobilized.  This was a happy moment indeed.

Conservatives howled with delight over the outrageously poisonous display of political  sturm und drang. Biden’s performance may have been exactly what his coliseum fanatics were waiting for -  Trump and his sycophants thrown to the lions and dismembered, disemboweled, and eaten alive – but to conservatives, this ridiculous display was the key to victory in November.  His histrionics were all the more ridiculous because they were clearly scripted.  Everyone in America knows that Joe Biden is an increasingly incompetent old man, propped up on stage when necessary, following script written by his handlers, staying on message – not this fulminating windbag.  The inconsistency made his appearance all the more absurd.

Most American presidents start minor wars when they are in electoral trouble, so we can be thankful that Biden only managed a wild and wooly stage extravaganza; and very soon his failed policies will come to the fore.  There is only so much that a bread and circus approach to governance can do.  Outrageous, undisciplined public spending, an open door policy to illegal migrants, social radicalism, and environmental hysteria cannot be swept under the rug. 

American politics has become a side show of venality and deformity.  No one can possibly take any politician seriously, and the New Age Man must have a new talent – an ability to look beyond the hysterical images, parse the speeches, and discern policy.  Most conservatives loved Trump’s braggadocio, vaudeville, and runway antics, but looked beyond the show to understand his serious commitment to conservative principles.  One would hope that Democrats can look beyond this silly, pompous, irremediable display of political adolescence and focus on Biden’s policies, such as they are; but the Left has shown itself to be perpetually deluded by some faux Utopianism. 

So ordinary Americans will have to wait and see if the side show packs up its wagons and moves on; but given American history, this is very, very unlikely.