Flashing, not gnashing

3.10.24

I’m sure that many of you watched the State of the Union address on Thursday; Biden made a strong showing that will put to rest some of the anxiety about his age. There’s no doubt he’s slowed a bit, but being a great leader isn’t about winning the lightning round in Jeopardy: it’s about building a team and leading with deep convictions and humane instincts. All that was solidly on display. 

A word, if I may, about the Republican response by Sen. Katie Britt. While watching that, I had the thought,” I can’t wait to see what Saturday Night Live does with this.” We have an answer already. 

But snarkiness, though justified in this particular instance, runs counter to our journalistic principles here at Dems of Davidson HQ. No doubt millions of Americans found her performance to be authentic and compelling. But quite apart from the kitchens, crosses, and coquettishness, the sheer facticity of her statements prompts reflection.

After accusing President Biden of not just “creating the border crisis” but “inviting it,” she tells the story of how, after the election, “I took a different approach” by traveling to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where “I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me … She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.” The lurid detail and the emotional, breathless style of narration adopted by Sen. Britt was clearly designed to stoke the fires of outrage. Any reasonable listener would assume there was some factual, causal, connection between this truly horrible story and the relaxed border policies of President Biden. 

But it very soon emerged that the woman in question, Karla Jacinto Romero, had endured all this between the years of 2004 and 2008, when George Bush Jr. was president and moreover, that the abuse took place in Guadalajara and Mexico City, hundreds of miles from the American border (more here). This story has nothing to do with President Biden or his policies.  It might also be observed that Republicans are adding insult to injury by appropriating this sad, sad, story to score political points for a party that is led by a convicted sexual predator.

We all know that the Left and the Right are dwelling in different ecospheres where media is concerned, and that events can be interpreted in radically different ways. But even allowing that reasonable, good-hearted people might see things very differently than we do, I trust it is not crazy to believe that something like an external world does in fact exist, and that it is possible to make true or false statements about it. Our criminal justice system, flawed though it may be, rests on the basic principle that it should be possible to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that something did in fact happen or that someone did in fact do something. 

I say all this, not to provoke still more outrage or gnashing of teeth on our part, but to promote the settled and steady belief that in this instance–and in many others–our opponents have departed from this basic principle and that we can remain calm and confident in opposing them.  

Rather than gnashing your teeth, come to our gathering on Thursday ready to flash a friendly smile to new political friends. 

Have a splendid week,

Greg