After nearly two years of vilifying people who disagreed with his COVID policies, President Joe Biden took a different approach last night in his State of the Union address. He called for people to stop arguing with each other over COVID. He urged unity. He encouraged people to do the exact opposite of what he has been doing himself this entire time: sowing the seeds of division and discontent.
“Let’s stop looking at COVID as a partisan dividing line, and see it for what it is: a God-awful disease. Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we really are: fellow Americans,” Biden said. “We can’t change how divided we’ve been. But we can change how we move forward — on COVID and other issues we must face together.”
Except looking at COVID as a partisan dividing line is what Biden has done for the last two years. It’s disingenuous for Biden to scoff at the COVID division when he was a prominent purveyor of it. Consider that early on, he supported dividing vaccine recipients by race. Then, he was highly critical of people who did not want to get vaccinated despite claiming that vaccines were untrustworthy when Donald Trump was president. Furthermore, who could forget Biden claiming that COVID was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” which further polarized the country?
“Stop looking at Covid as a partisan dividing line.” @POTUS
Says the man that treated the unvaccinated like second class. Did he forget his @DeptofDefense forced out service members, people were denied transplants if unvaccinated as well.
— XIMENA (@RepublicanChick) March 2, 2022
Also, as far as dividing people, remember Biden’s repeated mantra of “trusting the science,” only to claim incorrectly that those who receive vaccines would not get the virus. This led to questions of credibility, which led to skepticism, resulting in more division. Moreover, if anyone dared to question these inconsistencies, they were ostracized from society as either uneducated or selfish and irresponsible.
Additionally, there were Biden’s attempts to intimidate service members. Voluntarily risking one’s life to defend the country was not enough to be excused from his wrath. He threatened to discharge every member of the military who refused to comply with his vaccine mandate.
Yet with the eyes of the entire country on him last night, amid disastrous public opinion polls and numerous crises plaguing his presidency, Biden put on the mask of the country’s unifier in chief. While he undoubtedly fooled some, ultimately, it was a facade, and everyone should see through it. Most importantly, no one should forget it, and he should be held accountable come election time in 2022 and, most importantly, 2024.
