[Last night's televised address to the nation] was the most important speech of President Joe Biden’s political career, and it was a wake-up call to the nation, and particularly to the mainstream media. . . . He was absolutely right, in my opinion, that the Trump wing of the [Republican] party – the MAGA Republicans – have jumped the rails of constitutional democracy, of the factual universe, and of representative democracy. You cannot have a democracy in which one party does not accept the legitimacy of the other party’s candidates, elected officials and the outcomes of elections. But that is where we have come with Donald Trump and the MAGA faction since they first questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s election and denied that he had been born in America. That was the start of all that has ensued since. And it’s really important that President Biden called that out for the nation.
Biden’s calling out of all this is extremely important, because we have allowed ourselves to get to the point where threats and intimidation and violence are routinely used to intimidate people. Let me be frank: This is terrorism. It has been directed most recently at the FBI, at our National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are housed. It has been directed at teachers and school boards. It has been directed at public health officials. It has been directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.
And yet mainstream news continues to practice bothsidesism, continues to pretend that these things are just partisan. . . . We face existential threats to democracy in America, and they are coming from one place: from Donald Trump and those he has persuaded to follow him with the big lie, with a calculated system of media disinformation. And what’s most important is that he and the donors behind this, and that media, have also cowed every Republican elected official in office, except Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom have been defeated, and others less well known who have spoken the truth, who have stood up to Donald Trump and who have stood up to the lies, who have lost office or are leaving office because they know they cannot be reelected by this MAGA party.
We are absolutely, as [Biden] said, at an inflection point in our country, and we must take stock and treat the coming midterms as truly the chance we have to save democracy from further wreckage. There’s no point in talking about candidates for 2024 if we do not stop the election deniers and the election riggers from gaining control in state after swing state, as they are trying to now. Those are the people who won all the Republican primaries.
. . . Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are . . . trying to conquer critical institutions. He has pardoned people in the military who engaged in illegal conduct. He has lifted them up as heroes. He has now elevated . . . those police officers who violated the law on January 6. We have had attacks on election boards and public health workers in this country, and on teachers. . . . We also have Republicans attacking the domain where I work – higher education – spreading lies, attacking teachers, trying to divide students and faculty from community.
We are at red-alert stage. In military terms, it is DEFCON 1 for democracy in America. And it’s time that the mainstream media started to recognize that. President Biden gave us the call and said exactly what is happening in very clear and eloquent terms. So we can only hope that Americans respond calmly, deliberately and with determination to alert their neighbors, to canvass for these midterms, to make sure people understand the high stakes of these elections. It is only the people who will be the guardrails of our democracy responding in a calm, nonviolent, determined way to ensure that we still have a democracy for generations to come.
. . . Ordinary Americans see the parallels. Donald Trump and this [extremized] Republican Party has breathed life into white supremacist, white nationalist forces. It’s no longer the Ku Klux Klan in the forefront, but we see groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and all these . . . kind of freelance militias, who are committed to a set of ideas very much like those of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and milder forms of which are embraced by this MAGA faction of the Republican Party, namely the idea that only certain people are legitimate Americans, particularly white middle-class Christians, that other people don’t belong, that they’re there on sufferance; that white Christian Americans have the right to run the country, have the right to drive others out or subdue them, and have the right to dictate, and that somehow that is God-given, and that those elements of our history that President Biden referenced last night, the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, that all [people] are created equal, that all people deserve dignity and voice, that is a reaction against that. It is a rejection of the multiracial democracy and the country that is supposed to be open to the progress and achievement of all.
President Biden was absolutely right to say – to mention white supremacists and to say that this is an emergency for our country and that we all must pay attention and, if we care about democracy, commit to making sure it will last and it will work for all of us.
For Democracy Now’s complete interview with Nancy MacLean, click here.
Related Off-site Links:
Historian Nancy MacLean in Conversation With Marianne Williamson – Transform (March 1, 2022).
Biden Accuses Trump of Damaging Nation’s Democratic Values – PBS Newshour, September 2, 2022).
Biden’s Speech Walks a Fine Line in Its Attack on MAGA Republicans – Domenico Montanaro (NPR News, September 2, 2022).
Democratic Ads Boosted Extremists in Republican Primaries. Was That Wise? – Lauren Gambino (The Guardian, August 7, 2022).
There Is No Darkness Republicans Won’t Follow Trump Into Now – Charles P. Pierce (Esquire, August 12, 2022).
UPDATE: Claims of Voter Fraud, Old As the Republic, Still Work As Weapons For Trump – Ron Elving (NPR News, September 4, 2022).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “Come for the Racism, Stay for the Autocracy”
• William D. Lindsey: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2022
• Heather Cox Richardson: It’s Up to Us to Prove That Democracy Is Still a Viable Form of Government
• “How Can One Overreact to a Mortal Threat to American Democracy?”
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking Democracy
• “The Coup Attempt on Jan. 6th Was a Warning for What’s to Come If We Don’t Act”
• “My Biggest Worry Is for My Country”
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy
• The Big Switch
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• Heather Cox Richardson on Combating the Republican Party’s “Rigging of the System”
• David Remnick: Quote of the Day – February 13, 2021
• Dan Rather on America’s “Moment of Reckoning”
• Michael Harriot: Quote of the Day – January 6, 2021
• Insurrection at the United States Capitol
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• Fascism Is Upon Us
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