President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn’t begin for months, Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
But will he do anything to stop their extremism or reduce their numbers?
spoiler
No.
What exactly do you expect him to do?
I don’t expect anything from Joe “nothing will fundamentally change” Biden.
But what he could do is use his unparalleled ability to communicate with the public to rally antifascist and progressive forces into direct action against the MAGA movement. Rather than just waiting until the next game of voteball, a united front could stand up and break up the fascists before they became a problem in the first place.
Oh, hey, how about that - didn’t expect to see an r/Iowa refugee over here. Welcome to the greener pastures that are generally just as painfully, unthinkingly liberal but far less cancerous.
😘
You. mean the thing he literally did?
No? He told us to play voteball. That’s it.
Ah, you’re one of those people who think voting doesn’t change anything. Got it.
Well voting isn’t going to actually get rid of these people. They’ll still be here after the election no matter who wins.
Getting rid of them requires other action.
Oh, I see. You want to start murdering people. Go ahead and start. I’m sure the rest of us will be right behind you.
I said no such thing!
My enemies deserve the chance to be rehabilitated in work camps - so really what we need is to make the election irrelevant if you know what I mean.
Do you expect the president to encourage vigilantism? That’s an… interesting line of thought.
I literally said I don’t expect him to do anything.
I’m just saying, there are options he won’t take.
Nobody wants to encourage vigilantism, so if thats the only option you can provide then you don’t have any options either.
The enemy is encouraging vigilantism and insurrection. Keep fighting with one hand tied behind your back, see what happens.
And I’m saying it’s a good thing he won’t take those options.
Sometimes there’s no choice.
That requires active engagement in one’s community beyond vote-shaming and whining on social media - you’re not going to see much of this from either party.
Actual community involvement is hard. let’s go joe, blue no matter who, if you don’t vote blue you enable fascists etc. is easy and still lets them feel good about doing something… even if it’s ultimately ineffective.
I think they especially hate people who vote third party or conscientiously abstain from electoralism because they know, deep down, that none of that shit really matters.
And if voting doesn’t really matter, they have to face the truth - they have done absolutely nothing at all