I’ve seen lots of posts asking whether Biden’s speech yesterday was actually good or if we are so used to Trump’s meandering, mean-spirited rants that it just *seems* good by comparison. Granted, a speech given in full sentences, where each sentence contributed to the development of an idea and each idea contributed to an overall vision expressed by the speech as a whole is a HUGE improvement over the half-thoughts expressed in half-sentences we’ve gotten used to. But there was a lot more going on that bears mentioning:
1) He talked about his family. Lovingly. That’s something Donald Trump has almost never done, except talking about Ivanka (in his creepy way). He certainly hasn’t included them in the credit for anything he’s accomplished. I mean, Melania and Barron were both sick with the same potentially deadly, potentially life-altering virus that put him in the hospital, and he hasn’t even mentioned their illness! Meanwhile, Biden presented himself and his successes as entirely the product of his family.
2) His speech was directed to and about *us*. Donald Trump’s speeches are almost always entirely about him.
3) Most importantly, Biden talked about an America that included all of us – gay, straight, trans, Black, white, Native American, disabled, liberal, even conservative. Donald Trump always talked about an America that EXCLUDED most of us – if you weren’t cis-male, white, straight, able-bodied, Christian, third-or-greater-generation, and preferably rich, you weren’t part of his America, and the only time he addressed you was to tell you how to feel about him or (more often) to tell you how much you don’t belong here.
I don’t know whether Biden will be a great president or a run-of-the-mill one or even a bad one (though that end of the scale has been permanently recalibrated and he’ll ALWAYS be better than Donald Trump). I don’t know if even a great president can repair the American carnage we’ve lived through these last 4 years, especially in the face of what looks to be a permanent Alliance of the Ill-Intentioned and Ignorant doing everything possible to prevent him from doing anything at all.
We have a lot to deal with: rooting out centuries of endemic racism and sexism, preventing or at least mitigating global climactic collapse, dealing with this horrific pandemic (and the next one, and the one after that), battling economic inequity so vast it threatens to create a permanent serf class in our country, creating an educational system that actually pushes students to their highest potential, and so much more. I don’t know how much of that Biden is up to, or Harris, or whoever comes after her. But I feel a lot better that at least we will TRY to make real changes over the next 4-16 years, instead of wallowing in our own feces like we have the last four.
I mean yeah, it was a good speech.
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