A lot of people have commented on the nasty and divisive racism that permeated Joe Biden’s speech to the Morehouse College class of 2024. Biden assured the grads that they’re entering a world that hates them and blocks them at every turn. However, that’s par for the Democrat course. What really struck me, aside from Biden’s obsession with himself, was the complete absence of any aspirational ideas. These graduates weren’t told to go forth and be wonderful. They were told to “abandon all hope, ye who exit here,” and that their only salvation was the government.

I have a hard time listening to Biden. His slurring, mumbling, and shouting, along with his reptilian appearance (it’s something around the eyes), irritate me. I do better when I focus solely on his words, which I found on the White House website. To spare you the agony of reading it, I've listed his topics in the order in which they appear. Take a minute to read them because a few things will jump out at you: 

In brief, it was a typical Biden speech. A whole lot of self-aggrandizing and maudlin “me, me, me” stuff, blatant lies, and racial demagoguery. The only thing it left off was the line about “puttin’ y’all back in chains.” However, in addition to what was there, something profound was missing: Aspiration.

Aside from a single throwaway line, Biden had nothing to say about the singular blessings of the graduates’ newly acquired knowledge and the diplomas that prove that knowledge. He could barely spare a sentence for the great opportunities that await them after their four years of presumably hard work. The speech was focused, instead, on the horrors of America.

I bet that when you graduated from middle school, high school, college, or graduate school, the speech was about opportunity and the future. It promised you that if you applied your talents and worked hard, you’d succeed. Biden’s speech painted a dark, practically post-apocalyptic America in which the graduates will die...unless the government saves them.

Although Biden threw Jesus’s name around a bit, what Biden offered was a very different type of religious exhortation: It was the statement that America is a hellscape and that the government is those graduates’ only salvation. This was a speech that was simultaneously blasphemous and deeply, deeply un-American.

Since its founding, America has been premised on the idea that when people are unleashed, they are unstoppable. For a long time, America’s shame was that African Americans were leashed, first through chattel slavery and then through officially sanctioned, open discrimination. Joe Biden has a new premise: The only way for African Americans to thrive is if they willingly put their heads in the government yoke. Otherwise, they must abandon all hope.

Image: YouTube screen grab (edited).