January 20th local time, Biden, the 46th President of the United States, was officially sworn in and delivered an inaugural speech.
According to CNN, Biden’s inaugural speech, which has been conceived since November last year, is also very timely, called “unity” and “healing”, which seems to echo the speech of another US president 220 years ago.
On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the successor of Washington, the father of the United States, was sworn in in the newly completed U.S. Capitol.
Jefferson’s speech, well known as the “Med-in Speech”.
One of them is widely circulated:
“We are all Republicans, we are all federalists, which means that the broader picture of peace and stability is dispelling narrow prejudices.”
Behind Jefferson, who told “we”, was the recently concluded War of Independence, and the United States, which was still extremely divided at that time. In order to elect the president, the then Congress conducted a total of 36 votes.
Jefferson would not have thought that 200 years later, the Capitol would be violently broken by Americans themselves before the presidential inauguration ceremony, which also made the world worried about the inauguration ceremony.
In Washington, D.C., where tension is comparable to that of war, 25,000 National Guards are on duty. This is not only three times as many inaugurations in previous sessions, but also the most militarized inauguration since the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
In contrast, the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is only about 5,000.
Wang Fengzhi, a reporter from Taiwan in the United States, sent many videos to Tan Zhu a few days before the inauguration ceremony. Except for soldiers and military vehicles armed with guns, the streets in Washington, D.C. are empty.
Who is the enemy the United States is going to face now?
Through Biden’s speech, you may see the answer clearly.
At noon local time on January 20, Biden stood at the rostrum of his inaugural speech.
Before Biden spoke, many media were predicting what the speech would be.
Before the inauguration, Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director responsible for Biden’s media campaign, once hinted on ABC: “You can expect that this will be a time for President-elect Biden to really turn the page of division and hatred for the United States.”
Biden has proven to be really trying to “turn the pages” of his past completely.
His opening remarks are very “new atmosphere”: “Today is a day belonging to the United States, a historic day, a day full of hope, recovery and determination.”
However, looking around, there is no atmosphere of “recovery” and “rebirth” at the inauguration ceremony with high security and few audiences.
The United States did not wait for a “restart”, but a sudden riot and many ready flames.
Just as the inauguration ceremony was under bomb threats to the Supreme Court across Capitol Hill, the people at the scene were evacuated urgently, and the National Guard urgently reinforced the scene.
If the protesters stormed the Capitol on January 6, it can be explained that the police were not prepared. This time, there is another major threat, which is a little difficult to understand.
You know, Washington, D.C., was in a state of emergency as early as the 11th.
25,000 National Guard guards, why are they still threatened?
A statement by a Tennessee lawmaker provides an important clue. The statement said:
“The National Guard is about 90% men, and only about 20% of white men vote for Biden. Fewer than 25% of people really want to protect Biden, and the other 75% are people who want to do something to Biden.”
Guaranteeing order may become chaos.
Just before the inauguration, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy raised his concern that there might be a mole inside the army. Therefore, each person involved in the activity should be reviewed twice or even three times.
Tanzhu noted a detail that the review would be conducted through databases and watch lists maintained by the FBI, including criminal record investigations or investigations related to terrorist threats.
It turns out that such an internal threat investigation is aimed at the indigenous insurgents of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State or similar radical organizations.
Now, the subject of the investigation has become the U.S. National Guard.
The day before the inauguration, the “mole” was really discovered, and 12 members of the National Guard responsible for the security of Biden’s inauguration were released from duty.
America’s enemy is not someone else, but itself.
In addition to security threats, Biden, who has just taken office, is about to face another bad thing.
Biden could face impeachment the day after he took office.
A week ago, Georgia’s newly elected Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green revealed her plan to submit provisions for impeachment against Biden on January 21 local time.
The reason is that “abuse of power, easy to be bribed by foreign forces to harm the interests of the United States of the United States”.
Just hours before Green announced the impeachment plan, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 232:197 to pass the draft to impeach former President Trump.
Trump thus became the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Ironically, according to the impeachment process, Trump’s impeachment will still have to vote in the Senate, which may also be on January 21.
There is also a detail worth noting. Impeaching the president requires two-thirds of the Senate vote to pass, which is difficult.
But it may be thought that as long as half of the senators found guilty of “sedition and rebellion”, the 14th amendment to the Constitution could be invoked so that Trump would not hold any public office in the future.
Calling for unity, the United States has just formed a new government, and it has ushered in the impeachment of former and current presidents.
At this time, the United States does not seem to see any signs of “unity”.
However, on the inaugural podium, Biden still forced his promise to “let’s start over”.
Just hours after taking the oath, Biden sent a notice to the United Nations that the United States would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement.
Half an hour later, Biden signed 15 executive actions and two institutional actions, repealing many of Trump’s previous policies.
The so-called “start over” is an attempt to completely “flip” over the past four years. And this dramatic “flip” was also staged four years ago, when Trump took office.
At that time, Trump signed an executive order on the fourth day after taking office, withdrawing from the TPP agreement that took eight years under the Obama administration.
In the next 100 days, nearly half of the 28 legislative agendas pushed forward by Trump were repealing Obama-era bills.
If Trump’s “flip” at that time, it completely drove the United States to a track that ran counter to the interests of the world and even most Americans.
Now, Biden is eager to “flip” and has the tendency to slam on the brakes and turn the steering wheel after returning to the driver’s seat.
Obviously, Biden is so anxious that he can’t wait even for a day.
This anxiety is reflected in three official speeches made public by Biden since winning the election:
Whether it is a victory speech, a Thanksgiving speech, or an inaugural speech, it has always appeared, a series of words that metaphorize “war”.
The nouns battle, uncivil war, attack directly locate the reality of the United States under many crises.
The verbs defend, confront, fight, although it is an appeal to American action, it shows Biden’s nervousness more directly in the face of a big enemy.
One of the “achievements” that just left office Trump is proud of becoming the only U.S. president who did not launch a new war, but according to Biden, the “war” is happening in every inch of the United States at this moment.
In the three speeches, Biden mentioned the most, and there were two words, “unity” and “hope”.
However, the background of “hope” is covered with the imminent “desperation”, just like this sentence:
“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself, a cry that is desperate or any more Re clear now. “
“This land hiss for survival, and the roar has never been so desperate and resounding from my heart.”
Survival means “survival”, and the United States has reached the edge of a cliff. What is the enemy that forced the United States to such a desperate situation?
The answer Biden gave to this question in his speech is not the coronavirus, but the pervasive “angry, resentment and hatred”; it is “manipulation of facts, even fabrication”.
Ten days before the inauguration, Biden tweeted:
“With ten days left, all of us will move forward and start to rebuild together.
The offensive remarks in the comment section of this tweet reveal the many “hate” and “toxic political legacy” left by Trump to the United States.
As the first president to “govern by Twitter”, The New York Times analyzed 11,000 tweets since Trump took office, of which 5,889 contained attacks on at least 630 people or events.
According to the statistics of Trump Twitter Archive, there are a lot of insulting words in Trump Twitter.
For example, there are 234 “loser”, 222 “dumb or dummies”, 204 “Terrible” and 183 “Stupid”.
The past four years, the hate that the president has incited has been fermenting on American social media, which also has Biden’s self-deprecating phrase: “Now talking about unity may sound like a stupid fantasy”.
Still, Biden offered solutions that pushed Americans toward unity.
A research institute has counted 6,065 tweets Biden has posted since 2007, with key keywords including “middle class”, “affordable” and “guarantee.”
Correspondingly, Biden has spent a lot of time in three speeches, repeatedly discussing his core governance goals of “rejuvenating the middle class”.
It’s easy to say nice things, but it’s not that easy for stalled trains to brake.
Over the past four years, Trump has also made a promise to the middle class in the United States to “bring jobs back to the heart of the United States”.
However, none of the two most influential things Trump did in 2017 that he had just entered the White House was for the welfare of the middle class.
The first is to immediately support the Republican Party to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act. When the bill passed in the House of Representatives, the analysis of the CBO said that it would leave nearly 24 million Americans without medical insurance within 10 years.
The second was the signing of a tax cut for the rich with a value of up to $2 trillion, which gave 83% of the long-term benefits to the richest 1% of Americans.
According to the view shared by Hack Jacob, the author of Twitter Governance, to Tan, the Trump administration has exacerbated this polarization by defending the interests of economic groups and winning the support of middle and lower voters.
The corresponding reality is:
In the past four years, the richest 1% of the United States’ income has risen to 20% of the total revenue of the United States; the bottom 50% has a share of income to 13%.
Forty years ago, the richest 1% in the United States earned 11%, and the bottom 50% accounted for 21%.
The “spun hammer” social structure proud of the United States has become a “M” structure with two ends and a few middles.
When Trump left office, many American media were summarizing him. NBC’s assertion is typical: Trump left office without a wall or strong economic growth, and he left no political legacy except division and violence.
Others joked that Trump left a self-destructive political legacy. And these heritages, not only not dissipated, but also continue to permeate.
In order to harvest the tens of millions of voters who followed him, Trump planted a new seed in his farewell speech. He is already discussing with the team to form a new political party called the “Patriot Party”.
The dawn of “back on track” is not yet visible, but some shadows have floated over the United States.
Through search engines, Tanzhu found an interesting phenomenon that the popularity of the word “American Dream” is on a downward trend in the United States.
The falling node is around 2010.
This trend is consistent with Wei Nanzhi, an associate researcher at the American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: Judging from the data, the proportion of the middle class in the United States no longer exceeded 50% of the population around 2010.
The social polarity is increasing, which means that more and more people’s dreams may begin to disillusion.
Professor Putnam, a Harvard sociologist, organized a team to track and visit 107 poor and rich children living all over the United States for several years. The end result was that their fate was completely different.
This social survey was finally written as a book “Our Children”.
The American dream is declining, and such decline is slowly accumulated and difficult to reverse.
Wei Nanzhi told Tan Zhu that the formation of the American dream was based on the use of political power by the United States to effectively control capital after World War II, and then effectively narrowed the gap between rich and poor.
But since the 1980s, the hollowing of American industry has accelerated, and the economic structure has begun to change, and the social structure has also changed.
In the change of social structure, the second hard ice that is difficult to melt in the United States has been nurtured.
Now, the number of minorities in the United States is increasing year by year. On the first day of office, Biden gave 11 million undocumented immigrants legal status. By 2050, the proportion of ethnic minorities in the United States will reach 50% of the total population of the United States.
These people are mostly middle and lower classes of society and important supporters of the Biden administration, but they are not all of the lower and middle classes of society.
Tan Zhu recently read a book, Strangers in Homeland, which is about the “silent majority” of American social groups – white people in the United States, who are also called “rednecks” with equally low economic and social status.
These people are strong supporters of Trump. In their eyes, minorities jumped the queue and stole their benefits.
When the two types of middle and lower classes meet, it becomes an indispelable racial crisis in the United States, attacking each other and harming each other.
The American dream has become an American nightmare.
That’s what Biden said in his speech that we should defeat “political polarization, white supremacy and domestic terrorism”.
Who is the enemy of the United States?
This is not only a question that the previous U.S. government should reflect on.
Looking back at the past four years, the United States has set up “imaginary enemies” everywhere. What has it got?
In the early morning of the 21st, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would impose sanctions on 28 people who seriously violated China’s sovereignty and were mainly responsible for China-related issues.
Many of these people, Tan Zhu, have revealed their true faces: Pompeo, Navarro, Bolton…
These people and their families are prohibited from entering the mainland of China, Hong Kong and Macao. They and their affiliates and institutions have also been restricted from dealing with and doing business with China.
It’s not that the time is not reported.
Who is the enemy of the United States? It is not to establish an imaginary enemy, but to deeply reflect on our own problems. Of course, we hope to see a rational return to the United States, and to see the two major powers of China and the United States move opposite each other.
On January 21, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying presided over a regular press conference. In response to Biden’s official swearing-in as President of the United States, she said:
“As long as you make up your mind, everything is possible. I believe that with the joint efforts of both sides, the good angels in Sino-US relations can defeat the evil forces.
Source: Yuyuan Tantian WeChat Official Account
