Biden and Chaos Revisited

 

PRESIDENT BIDEN AND  CHAOS REVISITED

 

President Biden's April 28 address to a joint session of Congress was as surreal as Revelation. Biden is a man of color who tries desperately to represent millions of Americans who believe they have no color.  He was on point in using crisis and opportunity as keywords in his address.  There was accidental humor in his saying "Now we're on Mars, discovering vaccines…."  We are not on Mars.  A very expensive investigating device is on Mars.  We, the American people, are not discovering anti-COVID vaccines; a small population of scientists are doing that work.  Mr. President be more cautious.  Do not expose your Achilles heel to your sworn enemies foreign and domestic.

 

It is as easy for President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to create a bipartisan consensus  about anything as it was for Tantalus to pluck a bunch of grapes.  [quick correction ----consensus about anything can't occur in the USA until 2121].

 

Since he assumed the office of the President,  Biden has suffered from his presentation of self.  In my mind's eye he appears as St. Sebastian shot with arrows of outrage and misfortune.   I suspect St. Jude will not intervene before 2024.  Biden's presentation of self is so sufficiently understated that he must pray that Psalm 23 is indeed the real deal.  I imagine the President is a normal person who is tormented by  aliens, Satanic imps and  amoral forces of Nature..

 

As an American citizen and a Democrat, I cultivate an oppositional perspective. I am not enthralled by Biden's patriotic patriarchal posturing.

 

 President Biden must atone for past sins ---- 1) his making common cause with Southern Republicans to slow school desegregation; 2) his role in the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice; 3) his complicity in sponsoring the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement   bill that prepared the ground for rampant mass incarceration of people of all colors.  President Biden is a consummate politician; he is not a saint. Like the majority of Roman Catholics, he will enjoy a season in Purgatory. His mortal sin will be his having had his left foot in the swamp of his GOP enemies and his right foot in the combat zone of his Democratic friends.  A split person-soul  can't gain immediate entrance into Paradise.

 

  Do not rush to condemn or condone. I had keep reminding myself not to hastily condemn Biden's milk-toast efforts to champion reconciliation in his address. Nor do I condone many aspects of his airy notions of what the reconstruction and  transformation of American democracy ought to include. In fact, his idea that rapid technological developments can be panaceas is quite frankly alarming.

 

President Biden  has done a praiseworthy job in heading the war against COVID -19.  Less than praiseworthy are his broad, expensive proposals for dealing with climate change, massive effort to immigrate into the USA, and  police and criminal justice system reforms;  equally problematic are his ideas about  the restoration of a robust economy,  the healing of what shall never be healed,  and establishing  a Spartan vision of pre-kindergarten to community college education;  Biden ought to be quite skeptical regarding the complexity of infrastructure issues, the cowardice of diplomatic polices,  Republican efforts to obliterate the concept of one person-one vote, gun control, and implacable paradigms  of so-called white supremacy, sneaky racism, and brash sexism. He must be more rigorous in dealing with our devastating mental health crises . 

 

 St. Patrick, according to religious mythology,  ran the snakes out of Ireland. George Washington, under the color of secular myth, made a confession about a cherry tree.   Biden is not  close to being St. Patrick. He does  not behave in any way like George Washington. His April 28 address failed to convince me that he has triaged and sequenced policies as carefully as he should. 

 

Although there were charming moments in President Biden's  address, the bulk of it was dreamy. Senator Tim Scott's rebuttal of the address was also dreamy, in part a result of his confusing difference of opinion with an embarrassing version of momma-praying Christianity. I am tempted to applaud Republican for exposing the character of 21st-century America by way of well-rehearsed political minstrelsy.  No, Senator Scot, the Democrats are not "doubling down on the division we've [ Republicans have] worked so hard to heal." The divisions are pre-existing conditions which have a long history of being created by Republicans and Democrats and Independents since the end of the Civil War.  Senator Scott do give your fellow citizens some credit for not being totally Potemkin stupid.

 

God, we pray that you pardon President  Joseph  R. Biden, Jr. for his imperfections and put him on a better highway into a future.  We pray that you chasten his fascist, Satanic enemies and force them to quake for a future of their souls.

 

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                                            April 29, 2021