WASHINGTON
On the evening of March 7, an old man derided as “Sleepy Joe” by the world’s most famous criminal defendant made his way toward a mahogany dais in a marbled chamber of the United States Congress.
Tucked beneath his arm were pages of a speech he would deliver over the next hour and six minutes, via live coast-to-coast television broadcast.
Virtually no one in the media commentariat believed he was up to it.
But clearly, the old guy was determined to confound all doubters and detractors who purvey the notion that a man of his age is capable of little more than drooling. Klieg lights illuminated his slow, purposeful steps and caught the glint in his bright blue eyes, a sign of confidence in what he was about to say.
Finally arrived at the speaker’s dais, he stopped to behold the impressive chamber, an arena of American history staged ancient Greek and Roman architectural style. The cavernous space was at once familiar—he had been here many times over the past half-century—and as breathtaking as the first time he entered into it. That night, he saw before him an overflow audience of Washington’s power élite.
The occasion was the State of the Union address, a White House duty prescribed by the U.S. Constitution, to be delivered annually to Congress from the floor of the House of Representatives—known as the “People’s House.”
Military and judicial grandees were settled in visitors’ benches just below the House rostrum. From galleries above, special guests and the Washington press corps looked on. And on the floor, four-hundred and thirty-five members of the House and one hundred members of the Senate sat on either side of a center aisle dividing America’s governing duopoly—the Republican and Democratic parties.
The old man at the dais was himself a stalwart Democrat, first elected to national office in 1972 as a senator from the state of Delaware; thirty-six years later, in 2008, he became vice president; following the election of 2020, he became a tenant of this city’s finest in public housing.
Before starting his talk, he paused once more, this time for a long minute’s gaze at the Republican side of the aisle.
The old man’s facial expression toggled between amusement and disapproval as he stared at the new breed of combative Republicans, more interested in kangaroo court investigations and snarky TV appearances than in tending to the nation’s affairs. Especially spiteful are the younger bunch. “Whippersnappers,” the old man likely thinks of them.
For indeed, Republican whippersnappers delight in mocking his occasional stutter. They were ecstatic when TV news film last year caught him taking a spill off his all-terrain bicycle—a heavy-duty model Trek FX 1 Disc that he rides during brief respites back home in Delaware. (When indoors, he works with free weights and pumps the pedal of his Peloton.)
Compare the Delaware guy’s exercise habits to those of a certain roly-poly Republican unembarrassed to have applied the “sleepy” adjective to the fit and slender speaker. Behold Obesity personified, a Floridan refugee upon being laughed out of Manhattan, a man only four years younger than the Democrat he taunts. Behold a soft-bellied fellow whose only known physical exertion of late consists of hefting his bulk on and off a golf cart—
A smile played over the old Delawarean’s face as he stood in silent contemplation…
…of spring-time memories, when he played shortstop for his Little League baseball team; of autumn afternoons when he was the half-back hero of his high school football team, later as a dashing wide receiver for the University of Delaware’s “Fightin’ Blue Hens” team; of the need for channeling recollected energy for the great battle ahead…
The reverie broke.
And then—whammo!
President Joseph Robinette “Sleepy Joe” Biden let loose with a bat-splitting baseball homerun of a speech that stunned his scoffers into shutting their mouths for once, out respect for accumulated wisdom.
It was a thrilling, Hail Mary touchdown pass of a speech, a cleats-up slide into home plate of a speech, a Harlem Globetrotters one-sided whoop-dee-doo…
…and a knockout punch of a speech so very many of us yearn to see one day soon land square on the sneering pumpkin-colored face of a Hitler-quoting golfer, a former owner of the Miss U.S.A. beauty pageant who would bumble into dressing rooms occupied by half-naked contestants (oops!), a thrice-married serial adulterer disturbingly desirous of his curvaceous daughter, patron of a leading lady of the pornographic cinema, a blaspheming huckster currently hawking holy bibles at $59.99 the copy (€55.55), an adjudicated fraudster and sexual predator with a serious flatulence problem…and a paunchy palooka long overdue to kiss canvas in a boxing ring—namely, Donald “Creepy Don” Trump.
Not so feeble for “Sleepy Joe,” that speech of his packed full of youthful “spit and vinegar,” as my grandfather used to say. And in these opening days of the 2024 baseball season, a speech gloriously reminiscent of the greatest slugger of all time—Joe “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio (1914-1999) of the New York Yankees, whose streak of fifty-six consecutive base hits back in the 1941 season is a record that stands to this day.
Now comes Joltin’ Joe Biden’s speech to revive another marker from 1941—a State of the Union address in that world war year from the greatest president of modern times, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945). In his address, Mr. Roosevelt urged the prescribed assembly of Washington élites to recognize the most dangerous moment of the twentieth-century, and to urgently rally in executing its defeat.
“Hitler was on the march then,” Mr. Biden said of his predecessor’s era. “War was raging in Europe. Freedom and democracy were under assault.”
Of the here and now, Mr. Biden added, “[M]y purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President [Abraham] Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.”
Pins dropped. Even the whippersnappers heard.
On at least one side of the aisle there was a palpable sense of what must done in our own dangerous moment—begun three years ago on January 6, when a losing Republican candidate for reëlection sold a fascist Big Lie about a “rigged” contest to his army of suckers, a lie that lives on to this day, a lie that is bedrock to a slow-motion civil war in our own time.
Here in Washington on that winter afternoon three years ago, the liar Trump incited thousands of his club-wielding Sturmtruppen to smash their way into the very House chamber where, on the evening of this year’s State of the Union address, five-hundred and thirty-five members of Congress heard Joe Biden speak truth to power.
Of the insurrection, which had lawmakers of both parties fearing for their lives as Trump-supporting thugs chanted death threats while claiming to be simple patriots objecting to the formal certification of a supposedly stolen election, Joltin’ Joe Biden said:
“We all saw it with our own eyes, live on television. Insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. Many of you were here in this room on that darkest of days.
“…[T]hese insurrectionists were not patriots. They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power and to overturn the will of the people.
“…America stood strong and democracy prevailed. But we must be honest: The threat remains and democracy must be defended. My predecessor [Trump] and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th.
“This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies. And here’s the simplest truth: You can’t love your country only when you win.
“As I’ve done since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy!
“Remember your oath of office to ‘defend against all threats foreign and domestic.’
“Respect free and fair elections! Restore trust in our institutions! And make this clear: Political violence has absolutely no place in America!
“The world is watching. History is watching.”
As it’s said in show business, Joe Biden “killed” with his March 7 turn at the State of the Union address. Over the month’s ensuing days, media mention of his advanced age melted into disappearance, reminding me of an old saw—
“Never pick a fight with an old man. He’s too tired to fight back, so he’ll probably just kill you.
•
To say that the American zeitgeist in this election year of 2024 is peculiar is to engage in felony understatement.
A bit more than half the country’s voters, so it seems from respectable opinion polls, favor a corpulent 77-year-old golf cart driver charged with ninety-one civil and criminal charges worthy of their vote for president. The charges include bank fraud, racketeering, theft of top-secret government documents in breach of the U.S. Espionage Act, and hush-money payments to the leading lady of pornographic cinema.
Yet an 81-year-old Trek FX 1 Disc rider and Peloton devotee, an eminently decent man, is supposedly “too old” for the Oval Office. Regardless of his accomplishments since soundly defeating the odious golfer in the presidential election of 2020:
• Brought the U.S. economy back to life after the height of the corona virus epidemic, to the envy of the world;
• Brought near full employment to the nation, with more people working than at any point in American history;
• Provided high wages and salaries in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure as never before in history;
• Brought about an historic expansion of benefits and services to veterans exposed to toxic environments;
• Saw the first meaningful gun legislation in thirty years;
• Rallied the world in support of Ukraine in response to Russian aggression;
• Oversaw historic student debt relief for middle- and working-class families;
• Delivered on the most significant environmental justice agenda in U.S. history;
• Saw to historic increases in government-sponsored health insurance for the American people.
Inexplicably, half the citizenry sees Donald Trump—whose term at the White House from 2017-21 was a disaster ending with a million-plus American deaths due to his mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, two impeachments, and a refusal to this day to withdraw his Big Lie—as a godhead.
And in his vomitous social media output Mr. Trump suggests bigly, as he would say, that his ongoing travails in criminal court are tantamount to the persecutions of Jesus Christ.
A master entertainer who acts as an instrument for inchoate rage, Mr. Trump has turned festering grievance in the resentful ranks of an American society undergoing demographic and philosophical change. None dare call the Republican godhead a bigot and fascist, but bigots and fascists who vote recognize a compatriot when they see and hear one.
To ensure the Trumpist cause marches forward in America, where fascism flowered in the 1930s and ‘40s, the Republican godhead of 2024 recently hosted a tête-à-tête with Europe’s leading counselor on authoritarianism at his Mar-a-Lago mansion and golf resort (of course) in Palm Beach, Florida. Said counsel being Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary.
Mr. Trump felt moved to flattery after his strategy sessions with his buddy from Budapest, begging a suspiciously unanswered question—Why?
“There’s nobody that’s better (sic), smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” said Mr. Trump, during a press conference. “He says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be and that’s the end of it,’ right? He’s the boss…he’s a great leader.”
•
It is impossible, in the very limited space of this dispatch, to list all of Donald Trump’s cruel and ludicrous statements, though a few remain distinctively top of mind. A sampling of mouthings that have attracted the Trumpist cult of fools, and worse sorts—
• Of refugees from violence and poverty: “They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
• Of the porno diva he diddled but claims never to have met: “Just look at that horse face!”
• Of a TV newswoman with the temerity to pose tough queries, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
• Of the late Senator John McCain, who spent almost six years in a Hanoi torture chamber for refusing to betray U.S. comrades during the Vietnam War, “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
It is similarly impossible to avoid gawking at the detritus of a multi-car highway crash surrounded by the flashing lights of ambulances, tow trucks, and police vehicles. Donald Trump knows this very human impulse, and instinctively applies it to the art of fascism—a two-step construct as seen by the British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970):
“First, fascinate the fools. Next, muzzle the intelligent.”
