 |
| Independence Hall |
President Joe Biden's speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia attacked “MAGA Republicans.” Biden highlighted The United States of America's divisions while appealing to our unity. He announced his topic as “The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation.”
Often criticized as divisive, Biden's speech sought unity by division. Biden did not create the divisions. Instead, he acknowledged them and tried to rearrange them.
Does that sound like a paradox? The great rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke explained in The Rhetoric of Motives that identification underlies all rhetoric. (By “rhetoric,” a rhetorical theorist means “the art of persuasion.”) Yet, identification invariably implies division. Burke explains:
“Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If [people] were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity.”
Burke’s point is that we identify ourselves, in part, by saying what we are not. If I tell people that I am an American, I imply that I am not a Canadian. If I call myself old, I separate myself from young people. Biden's Independence Hall speech divided “MAGA Republicans” from patriots, but he also divided MAGA Republicans from mainstream Republicans. So, although his speech was divisive, he did not divide the nation on party lines. Instead, he divided on the lines of patriots who respect the American system, opposed to people who do not. He tried to slice “mainstream Republicans” away from what he called the dangerous, unpatriotic MAGA movement. Since Donald Trump enjoys enormous Republican support, Biden walked on a thin line. At the same time, with hitherto respectable Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham threatening violence on the streets if Trump doesn't get his way, Biden could no longer pretend that the United States enjoys unity. Instead, Biden tried to confront the issue by manipulating the divisions within the Republican Party.
So, Biden asserted that former president Donald Trump was an extremist who threatened the United States’ Constitution. He established a division between MAGA Republicans and the rest of the United States. In the next breath, however, Biden divided MAGA Republicans from other Republicans:
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
“Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
“I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.”
Later in the speech, Biden argued for unity among groups that might otherwise be hostile. He asked those groups to unite to divide themselves from MAGA Republicans:
“Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.
“We, the people, will not let anyone or anything tear us apart. Today, there are dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail. We hear — you’ve heard it — more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool.”
So, was Biden's speech divisive? Certainly. Did his speech equally appeal to identification and unity? Yes. As Burke noted, identification and division are counterparts. Biden appealed to a common goal with which, he hoped, most Americans could identify: to maintain the American Republic. He divided MAGA Republicans, splitting them off from people who continue to respect our American way.
Let us keep in mind that division is not always bad. Donald Trump’s presidential rhetoric consistently pitted Americans against one another, often in harmful ways. In contrast, Biden’s speech tried to re-sort the ways in which Americans identify with one another. Indeed, Biden’s expression “MAGA Republicans” divided the Republican Party into opposing groups: those that support Donald Trump, and those who do not.
Indeed, just as identification lies at rhetoric’s center, so does division. The United States faces two possible paths. We know that most Americans favor the path that Biden laid out in his Independence Hall speech. Unfortunately, we also know that Biden's hope that MAGA Republicans make up a tiny minority was speculative at best.
The press pretty much overlooked Biden's most unifying statement, in which he identified with all Americans, even his opponents:
But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.We identify with some people by dividing ourselves from others. Throughout its history, the United States of America has faced a conflict between conservatives and progressives. That conflict has represented itself in a slavery-based economic system, the struggle for civil rights, and the current debate about voting rights. That conflict tore us apart in the Civil War, and nearly tore us apart again during the 20th Century’s civil rights movement. In both of those cases, conservative extremists threatened to destroy the country rather than to accept human equality. The United States’ fracture line threatens to split again. Can we find unity and common cause? Or would the Republican Party prefer to destroy America simply because their ideas were not popular enough to win an election?
President Joe Biden's Independence Hall speech did not create divisions; he acknowledged them. He gave the Republican Party one last chance to identify with the rest of the country. Are they willing to take that opportunity? Or, as too many of them threaten, do they want to create another Civil War, fighting for an evil cause that will surely fail?
___________
___________
Research note: Kenneth Burke's monumental book The Rhetoric of Motives makes for heavy reading, but it is worth the effort
Photo: William D. Harpine
No comments:
Post a Comment