In early January 49 BCE, then Roman governor Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubicon with his army, in violation of the Senate’s edict prohibiting the entry of armies into Italy; the Rubicon then marked the northern border of Italy. In so moving his men under arms across that frontier, Caesar triggered a civil war that resulted in him becoming dictator for life over Rome. In the modern idiom, the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” suggests that someone is passing a point of no return on a path to intended tyranny.
Last Thursday evening in Philadelphia, in a campaign speech billed ahead of time as one aimed at unifying Americans in these troubled times, President Biden excoriated “MAGA Republicans” at great length, villainizing them as existential threats to the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy. He claimed Trump supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.” He followed with: “[T]here is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.” Such blatantly scurrilous “J’accuse” languaging was mean, lurid, and inflammatory — even inciteful. And the staging of the event was redolent of totalitarian leaders’ public speeches in the 20th century: A crimson-red backdrop and two Marines flanking him in the background standing at some form of parade rest, whether truly per-protocol or contrived. And so, with them, themes of anger (rage?), absolutist authority, the military’s support, and implied psychological intimidation were salient. As Tom Fitton, president of the civilian government watchdog Judicial Watch later observed, the combination of abusive rhetoric and totalitarian imagery serves to paint a target on Trump and tens of millions of supportive Americans for political suppression and worse. All this in the United States of America of 2022, just two months ahead of the mid-term elections.
No speech like that one given by Biden has been ever delivered at any time by a sitting president in American history. Even when the Republic was threatened with impending civil war in the mid-19th century, President Lincoln never resorted to rank vitriol and scorn demonizing the Confederacy, its leaders, or Southerners in general. Biden’s vituperative speech was as unique as it was explosive.
But it was not unexpected. The president has been scapegoating Americans who disagree with his plans and policies as “white nationalists” or “white supremacists” since early on in his administration. Underlying both terms of calumny is the cardinal sin in America today: “racism.” Disagree with any Democratic Party initiative emanating from the White House, Congress, or any federal agency and the challenger will be vilified publicly as a “racist”, regardless of whether there is any tangible nexus between the given issue and veridical racial discrimination. “Racism” is used as the all-purpose cudgel with which to beat down (“cancel”) anyone or any group or any organization that advocates for any viewpoint at variance with the “revealed truth” announced by any modern Democratic Party policymakers. On all issues — political, social, economic, technological, and moral — without exception. And the nation’s Big Media, Big Tech, Big Entertainment, and Big Business amplify all the charges and excoriations relentlessly and without restraint.
World history is instructive as to where such concerted assaults on a labelled group lead over time, however generalized and elastic, or particular and selective, the targeted members may be. Once the objects of an officialized ire and loathing have been identified, personalized, and isolated, the path forward for the scapegoaters becomes easy. Historically speaking, that path’s destination is always the same: destruction of human beings. Neocommunist activist Saul Alinsky described the process of agitation with doric clarity in his revolutionary guidebook Rules for Radicals, even as he omitted the eventual certain outcome of its protracted use over time.
In Mein Kampf (1923), Adolf Hitler infamously wrote: “The art of all the great popular leaders has always consisted in concentrating the attention of the masses on a single enemy [because] the masses are blind and stupid. [. . . .] The only thing that remains stable is emotion and hatred.”
His maxim had historical precedent even then: In 1789, the French Jacobins demonized the nation’s clergy (and royalty and aristocracy), and in 1917, the Russian Bolsheviks demonized the bourgeoisie (middle-class workers and merchants). Like so, and well before 1933, Hitler’s Nazis demonized the Jews and the communists. Later, starting in 1966, Chinese Communists demonized the bourgeois revisionists, and starting in 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge demonized the educated (including all wearers of eyeglasses). Much more recently, in 1994, the Hutus of Rwanda demonized the Tutsis, a minority black tribe in that African country.
Each time, regardless of who did the social demonizing and who was socially demonized, the result was eventually the same: Mass killings of innocent people, based on mass formation psychosis – a psychological, emotionalist conversion of throngs of otherwise pacific individuals into bestial killers.
Since early 2021, President Biden and America’s Democratic Party leaders have been demonizing “white nationalists” and “white supremacists” and the “privilege” and “status” supposedly accorded them based on their white skin color. But, in a reflection of just how twisted, contrived, and willfully tendentious such labels really are, even black conservatives such as attorney and gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder and author and social media celebrity Candace Owens have been tarred with the same opprobrious brush. Just for dissenting from the dictates, mandates, and potentates of the Democratic Party. They are, of course, not alone. And it’s still 2022, just the second year into the Bidenista regime.
America and all its inhabitants, legal and illegal, are now skating on dangerous ice as a society. The nation’s populace is increasingly polarized by ideology, moral values, the roles to be played by the federal government, the honesty and impartiality of government agencies, the fundamental integrity of our election processes, the notion of what a nation is, and even the nature of national allegiance. As a matter of history, these are the portents of not just a national decline but dramatic schism and overall collapse, to be followed by some form of brutally authoritarian, centralized control.
Indeed, as of this year to date, all indicators are that the metaphorical Rubicon has been crossed in America. Major agencies of the federal government that directly affect most Americans’ lives (viz., IRS, ATF, CDC, FDA, FBI, DHS, DOJ) have become covertly politicized and weaponized against dissent in word and deed by everyday citizens — and even against many of their customary and traditional practices of living, recreating, working, getting educated, and doing business. And now that Democrats in Congress have recently approved – completely unilaterally — the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents, it may be said of Biden’s regime that it will have, once again in American history, “erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” (ref. the Declaration of Independence) The American people mightily resisted just such an onslaught beginning in 1775 and for six hard years afterwards, emerging victorious only after much toil, strife, and devastation.
Will the Democrats hear the modern American people “singing a song of angry men [and women!]” against a new, encroaching enslavement or adamantly continue enacting their program of total control, quite oblivious to it? The next two years, through the elections of 2024, may well be much more than a euphemistic “inflection point” in our unique American story; they may, in fact, constitute a pivotal passage of redemption in the history of self-governance by free peoples everywhere. With wisdom in both action and prayer, a national existential crisis may be averted. Only time can tell.