Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States
If the last four years could be summarized with a single word, that word would be division. We sometimes become numb to it when the endless onslaught from the bully pulpit is about “them” instead of “us,” what “the Democrats are doing to us” as opposed to what we could all be doing together, fake news, enemies of the people, “Sleepy” this and “crooked” that. In his speech at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden reminded us of what we once were and could be again, the United States of America.
All the little man in the White House could do was pour scorn on Biden’s magnificent words of hope and unity. Trump is a malignant machine engineered to manufacture only hate and fear. From the time he was president elect to the current moment 75 days shy of four years later, Trump’s voice has remained snide, bitter, hateful, self-aggrandizing, malicious and, above all, divisive. At no point did the idea that he could be president for all the people occur to him. He was and remains devoted only to the diminishing mud puddle of his sad devotees, a puddle that is slowly evaporating in the warming sunlight of reason.
In accepting his party’s nomination, Joe Biden promised to end this “season of darkness.” Biden continued, “I’ll be a president that will stand with our allies and friends and make it clear to our adversaries that the days of cozying up to dictators is over. Under President Biden, America will not turn a blind eye to Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers. Nor will I put up with foreign interference in our most sacred democratic exercise: voting.” In so saying, Biden identified who America’s real enemies are: not each other, but malign foreign adversaries who would exploit our differences in order to destroy us from within.
In his speech Biden promised to begin immediately to take action against America’s four greatest threats, the pandemic, racial strife, the economic downturn and global climate change. Biden emphasized the opportunities these challenges present. Unlike the current usurper of the Oval Office, President Joe Biden will be too busy fixing the problem to blame his predecessor.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joseph Robinette Biden, the forty-sixth President of the United States. Will you join me in voting for him, so that we can send the current occupant and the judgment of history the unequivocal, overwhelming message that we are a people of unity, not division? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.