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We are all analyzing The Speech, Joe Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech on the growing anti-constitutionalism of Republican extremism. But first we must consider how difficult it is to evaluate a speech that no president should have to give.
Before we move on to Biden, here are three new stories from the atlantic.
a sad duty
Joe Biden told us last night that American democracy is under attack. He did so in plain language and left no doubt as to the nefarious nature or origin of the threat. Most importantly, he named names, including, finally, Donald Trump. The President took a political gamble and told the hard truth: that a significant number of citizens of the United States of America, concentrated in the rotten shell of the Republican Party, have become extremists who are engaged in unconstitutional opposition to our system of government. .
Every time a president gives a speech, experts, analysts and citizens jump to qualify the exercise. Was a great speech or just a Okay speech? Did you hit the right marks? Did it serve the right electorate? Did it help or hurt your party?
This discourse, however, defies such analysis. (I have some serious complaints about optics and staging. I’ll take care of that.) Instead, we should be deeply concerned that Joe Biden had to give this speech.
And make no mistake: He Dyed to give it His duty demanded it. As Biden rightly put it, American democracy faces a “continuous attack” from what he called “MAGA Republicans” who do not respect the Constitution, the rule of law, the will of the people, or the results of free elections. No president could remain silent under such circumstances.
In fact, I’m not sure it was strong. enough. I got a little upset when the president talked about reasonable Republicans he could work with. (“Joe Manchin?” I wondered.) Who are these Republicans? Where are they? If you are going to give a speech about how millions of people now live, as Biden put it, in the “shadow of lies”, and you think there are reasonable people among them too, you should encourage them to come out and fight alongside you. .
As someone who once wrote speeches for some politicians, I’d also drop points here and there for a loss of focus. I’m sure it was important to some staff to dig into prescription drugs, guns, and clean energy, but whoever approved the final draft should have drawn the red pen. This was not the time.
Above all, what I felt when I saw the president was sympathy and a kind of horror at having to say any of this. So I just can’t judge it other than as a sad duty, the same kind of speech a president should give in the face of a national tragedy. These are not speeches that anyone wants to write or give. However, if I had to pick one line that will resonate in history, I think, or hope, it will be Biden’s reminder that democracy requires sensible, tolerant, and mature human beings to function:
Democracy cannot survive when one side believes that there are only two outcomes in an election: Either they win or they were cheated… You cannot love your country only when you win.
It really is that simple.
Substance aside, if there is one place where this speech was a mistake, it was in the staging. Optics matter; bathing the president in red to make him look like the Infernal Eminence of him, Joseph Biden, Lord of the Underworld, was a bad idea. The podium seemed to be set up for a reading from the Necronomicon. Biden, using the light as a metaphor, should have been standing in a real place. light.
I have also taken a galactic amount of steam on social media for being among those who opposed the placement of two shadowy Marines behind Biden. People on Twitter inundated me with photos of presidents and military men, proving only that no one understood the problem. Yes, presidents often use the military as a backdrop, something I rarely like to see. However, it is almost always at the White House, or on military bases, in front of military audiences, at military-themed events, etc. Giving a speech about democracy in downtown Philly and bringing your own Marines is not something he can recall ever seeing. Frankly, staging the Marines as if they were the President’s Praetorian Guard is the sort of thing. Triumph I’d love to.
In any case, Biden did what he had to do. We have reached a turning point in American politics. The President of the United States has told us directly that our system of government is under attack. What happens next is, in every way, up to us.
Related:
Today news
- US job growth slowed in August but remained strong overall, according to the latest employment report from the Labor Department.
- Russia postpones the reopening of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, one of Europe’s main gas supply routes. The country said it discovered a problem during maintenance.
- A detailed inventory of the Mar-a-Lago search, released today, revealed that classified documents were mixed with personal items in storage boxes and that officials found empty folders containing classified documents.
Offices
evening reading
You’ve probably seen yourself in your memories
By Jacob Stern
Choose a memory. It can be as recent as breakfast or as distant as their first day of kindergarten. What matters is that you can actually visualize it. Hold the image in your mind.
Now consider: Do you see the scene through your own eyes, as you did at the time? Or do you see yourself in it, as if you were seeing a character in a movie? Do you see it, in other words, from a first or third person perspective? We usually associate this kind of distinction with storytelling and fiction writing. But like a story, each visual memory has its own implicit point of view. All seeing is seeing from in some place. And sometimes, in memories, that place is not where you really were at that moment.
Read the full article.
More of the atlantic
Cultural break
Read. A writer and mother suggests five books that are helping her raise children in a broken world. And there’s still time to pick something up from our summer reading guide, which has a book for every mood.
If you’ve been trying to read lately but nothing sticks to you, we suggest you turn to this list of 12 books to help you love reading again.
Clock. On cinemas, Three thousand years of longing it shows the whimsical and intellectual chemistry of its stars.
at home there is Blessing, available to stream on multiple platforms, a biography of a famous poet written by an empathetic filmmaker. (Or check out the rest of the options on our list of 10 Indie Movies You Must See This Summer.)
Do you want to start a TV show? Rutherford Falls, at Peacock, is an upbeat comedy about a small town fighting to honor native rights and traditions. (And be sure to check out our full list of must-watch hidden TV shows.)
Play our daily crossword.
P.S.
A while back, I wrote about my addiction to late night television, and specifically about the wonderful and weird network known as MeTV. Unfortunately I can’t get MeTV anymore, rest assured I’m working on it, so I thought I’d offer two offbeat movie recommendations for those of you insomniacs like me. Both are 80s gems that take place in the middle of the night: into the nightdirected by John Landis, and After hours, an image of Martin Scorsese. I drove a cab in grad school, and what I love about both movies is how they capture the way a city, after the bars close, has a different personality. And both are fun. Both were flops when they were released within months of each other in 1985, but have since found their cult following over the years.
Interestingly, their plots are similar: young men (Jeff Goldblum in Los Angeles, Griffin Dunne in New York), restless late at night, venturing into the city, straying too far from home, and mixing with beautiful but possibly unstable women. (Michelle Pfeiffer and Rosanna Arquette, respectively). Dark comedy, violence and general paranoia ensue. To say more would be to reveal too much, but keep an eye out for a David Bowie cameo in Los Angeles and a wacky turn by Verna Bloom in New York.
The Daily is closed for Labor Day, but I’ll be back with you on Tuesday. Enjoy your weekend.
– Thomas
Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.
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