The Humility of Joe Biden

My short, inadequate tribute to a sinner saved by grace, just like you and me.

Joe Biden will be remembered not as a good President, but as a great President. After a lifetime of personal heartache and tragedy, of playing second fiddle, of being passed over or not even winning at all, he pulled America away from the brink of a Trump dictatorship and racked up a stunningly-prolific record of accomplishment in a hostile, highly-partisan atmosphere.
 
At a time when treachery, lies and utter incompetence are threatening the future of the American democratic experiment, Joe Biden showed the humility and grace to be a team player, to set aside his own pride and rightfully-deserved chance to “finish the job” as he put it, by letting his party have a younger, more articulate standard-bearer. When he could have fallen to the temptation of hubris and stubbornness so many powerful men and women of history have succumbed to, he rose to the occasion yet one more time, and did the right thing.
 
Joe Biden is in short, everything Donald Trump is not. Can you picture Mr. “I-alone-can-fix-it” even contemplating such a thing? Donald Trump is the eternal Absalom, the rebel-without-a-cause, the would-be king who ascended to power by “stealing the hearts of the people,” stoking up grievance and slander (II Sam 15:6). In just one of his many treasonous acts, he called upon the Russians to hack the DNC to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. When brave little Ukraine needed our already-approved support, he sought to shake them down, to get them to make up some mud to smear Joe Biden with. When losing an election by every conceivable measurement, he became the King Saul who clinged to power rather than make way for a duly-elected David, “a man better than” himself (II Chron 21:13).

Propaganda Versus Reality

While Democrats spend over a billion dollars on paid advertising every two years, and several billion every four years, Republicans use this model of long-term trusting relationships [with right-wing radio hosts] to get out the vote for the GOP. They know the truth of the old advertising saying, “Nothing beats word-of-mouth.” And a recent Neilson survey supports that adage when it found that 92 percent of consumers “believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.”[1]
 
In arguing the outrageous case for a second term for such a dishonorable, now felonious man, Trump repeatedly claims Joe Biden “is the worst President in US history.” Why? Because thus saith him, that’s why. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
 
In collusion with this man is a vast supportive apparatus I call the right-wing noise machine, shamelessly pumping out lies, distortions and distractions, 24/7 (Jer 50:11). In just one small example, they daily shriek about how Biden “wrecked the economy.” Yeah, he wrecked it alright. He wrecked their decades-long “Reaganomics” scam.  He’s the first President since LBJ to successfully go back to FDR-style New Deal, “middle out, bottom up” economics as he puts it, abandoning what had redistributed nearly all profits to the top 1% the past 40 years (James 5:1-6).
 
As a result, the US economy is the envy of the world at this point, in spite of every lie they spew or all evidence to the contrary your own eyes see. The Stock Market has hit record highs, 401Ks have never been better, inflation is back down to normal levels, and we have the lowest unemployment rate among the top ten biggest economies—4.1%. (In 2023, it dropped to 3.4%, a near 60-year low). In all the eight years of Saint Ronald Reagan, it never fell below 5%, hitting a high at one point of nearly 11%. What’s still killing us of course, is the vast inequality of distribution, which Project 2025 wants to aggravate natch, by another tax cut for the top 1%.
 
So what’s the right-wing noise machine’s response to all this? That’s right, to put your brains in a blender and hit “frappe.” Yet what is really shameful is what mainstream media has done to truth and the public’s sense of reality since the 1980s. You know, that “Mainstream/Lamestream Media” that these liars never stop claiming are so “far, far left”?
 
It was around then, about 1988, that major news networks, already gobbling up smaller, locally-owned outlets, decided to go with the full-bore Fox model of yellow journalism. Abandoning their Constitutional responsibility to be the “fourth estate” free press a democracy depends upon for an informed public, they placed their news divisions under their for-profit entertainment departments, where they remain to this day.
 
Ever since then the emphasis has been upon sensationalism and the Fox “News” “fair and balanced” scam. Real journalism is fact-checking the government for the people, AND fact-checking the people for the government, lest mobs get manipulated by say, oh, I don’t know, air bag demagogues who know what emotional buttons to push in them!
 
Here is the Fox News idea of “fair and balanced”:
 
-Reporter: “What do you think about your opponent, Mr. Republican Congressperson?
 
-Republican Congressperson: “Why his grandmother is an axe murderer!”
 
-Reporter: “Mr. Democratic Congressperson, what’s your response to that?”
 
-Democratic Congressperson: “Why, that’s outrageous!”
 
-Reporter: “See, we’re ‘fair and balanced.’ You decide.”

Decide what? A lot of what you hear is just freestyle lies and gaslighting. The media has been so intimidated by this trick that if they had to fact-check every lie, they’d look like they’re in an adversarial role and not “objective journalists.”

But who’s responsible for this deplorable atmosphere of strong delusion (II Thess 2:11)? Both sides or only one? No wonder Jon Stewart and so many others have been pulling their hair out for decades now.

Reality Versus Propaganda

Here is Joe Biden’s actual track record in just 3 ½ years, belying the right-wing’s perpetual slander campaign against him. Here’s another formidable list of accomplishments compilednby Politico. You may not agree that every accomplishment is desirable, but you only get one of two choices in the broad, antiquated, two-party system the United States currently has.

God, The Final Judge

²⁴ Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.
²⁵ Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.

– the Apostle Paul, I Timothy 5.

Only God knows the real Joe Biden, all he’s been through, all his good points, all his bad, and all he did or did not accomplish in less than four years. He didn’t whine about his entitlement to a second term when his party and indeed, the whole Western alliance, asked him to accommodate both reality and to some degree, the perception of reality, so the cause of freedom would not succumb to the siren song of “illiberal democracy,” whatever that is.[2]
 
All I see is a devout Catholic who goes to church and prays regularly, who, when the time came to rise to the occasion, he did what was right, for his party, for his country, and for the world. If` you want to believe all the lies told about him out of the mouths of lying liars, led by the biggest sociopath of them all, go ahead. Just know you’ll have to answer to God one day for what kind of a witness to His true values you were.

 Notes:

[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/society/conservative-talk-radio/#:~:text=While%20Democrats%20spend,forms%20of%20advertising.%E2%80%9D
[2] Freedom is not possible without a democratic system to guarantee it. The “illiberal democracies” of Victor Orban’s Hungary and Vladimir Putin’s Russia are a contradiction in terms, a veritable Orwellian bastardization of language itself.