Angry President – Indignant, Wrong

An angry president? Not angry at a foreign power, like China or now terrorist-controlled Afghanistan –but at the American People, for whom he works – demands “respect” for government, “patience worn thin,” unveils constitutional violations, and tries to lock Americans into their safety seat. What is up?

Answer: Biden’s White House has become patriarchal, unapologetically autocratic, indifferent to popular will, Supreme Court, or the Constitution. This approach does not align with our history.

A president who left hundreds (perhaps thousands) to die in enemy hands, gives China a pass on COVID, trade, aims of nuclear dominance, does not properly enforce immigration or drug laws, pushed federal spending that sidelines labor and accelerates inflation, with taxes about to jump, socialist programs poised for passage, now demands employers violate fundamental rights of employees or be punished.

Specifically, the President’s “plan” demands:

• Penalties on employers with over 100 employees who do not assure vaccine compliance (or testing), affecting 80 million Americans;

• Similar mandate for federal workers, contractors, and healthcare workers, affecting another 28 million;

• Pressing vaccine passports for attendance at any public event venue (inside or out), affecting untold millions;

• Double fines for those flying without a mask (up to $3000 per violation);

• Employer-covered pay for time off to be vaccinated;

• Staff in federally supported schools (Head Start to Defense) be vaccinated;

• Federal control over local teacher salaries when states will not pay, due to state laws;

• Accelerated FDA vaccine development for those under 12;

• Federalizing of private sector test kit production; and

• Expanding punishments for violation of mask mandates.

If this federal usurpation of individual, private sector, local, and States rights – all assured by the US Constitution – was not sufficiently breathtaking, the bombshell comes on the 20th anniversary of an attack that unified America, on heels of a disgraceful abandonment of Americans, and with anger.

One is hard-pressed to properly digest, or place in context, this knowing offense against popular will, national sovereignty, and our Constitution. Even less clear is why a president would accost the American people, blithely condemning them – or more than half of them – for exercising clear rights.

Only explanations: Either the President and those around him are sufficiently out of touch with reality that they think we are at war, somehow justifying constitutional deprivations on this order, or they do not care whether they are legally entitled to oppress well-established rights but are resolved to do so with outsized arrogance and hubris, inebriated by power, angry at those who assert established rights.

To be clear – since so much else from our government is not – this virus, however described, is not war and cannot be imagined as justification for the kind of profound deprivations of war. As in prior days, if vaccines work, the vaccinated are protected. If they do not, there is no use getting one. As side effects occur and affect individuals differently, information consistently inconsistent – the choice is personal.

As many informed doctors, not those politicians who have lied to Americans, confirm – viruses of all kinds come with uncertainty, as do vaccines hoping to mitigate them. Thousands of coronaviruses exist, and always will. This one appears engineered but acts as others – raising antibodies once caught and over it. 

Like many coronaviruses, original and variants affect those with underlying health conditions disproportionately, variants readily transmissible. Like many, most who catch it recover, few dying, those vaccinated less likely to catch it, and if they do, likely to see more modest symptoms.

All this is a matter of record, much rehashed – along with broad understanding, slow in coming, that we do not know long-term effects of the virus, nor of vaccines created to mitigate it, as honest doctors will admit. As with so much else in medicine, this explains why we leave decisions to individuals.

All this returns us to the stunning Biden press conference of September 9th – stumbling but angry, brash and indignant, occasionally incoherent, consistently defiant – as it ready to take on the US Constitution, Supreme Court, and American people, later blurting “have at it,” in an odd, last lurch of a windup doll.

And that is where we are, with the likelihood of lawsuits flying, individuals, companies, schools, towns, and states suing each other and the federal government, interlocutory appeals made by those trying to stay afloat, avoid bankruptcy, continue operations, honoring the well-founded liberties of their employees, and their own rights.

Bottom line: This President, who recently swatted down a Supreme Court ruling, only to be swiftly reversed by the Court, who indulges talk of political court-packing to undermine law, who pretends an interest in unity while dictating disunity, who has himself above law, history, the People, is out of line.

An old Washington saw says, “what goes around comes around,” another “there is always a reckoning.” The Constitution has not changed, nor your rights. The People are not stupid, and it is rather their patience – not Mr. Biden’s – which is growing thin. This slap at the Constitution will not stand. Angry, arrogant, and indignant, his view is also legally wrong.