Mr Biden’s speech is his first major campaign event of the 2024 election season
President Joe Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by warning that the issue of American democracy will be “what the 2024 election is all about,” as he runs against former president Donald Trump once more.
Mr Biden, who spoke near the Valley Forge historical site where George Washington and the Continental Army were encamped during the winter of 1777 and 1778, told attendees that they were there “to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”
“This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” he said.
Mr Biden said his speech, his first major event of the 2024 election season, was “deadly serious,” and about a topic that needed to be raised at the outset of his campaign.
We’re living in a time when creating extremists is too easy. People used to have to stand in little rooms full of disgruntled people and yell into a microphone. They had to organize and create newspapers and pamphlets. They had to have money to spread their message. They had to lose money to spread their message in hopes of taking power. It took years to rile up enough people to create problems.
Now, any dangerous person has the ability to reach an audience with ease.
It has gotten so bad that even people who aren’t even remotely connected to the internet are extremists. Pawpaw with his flip phone stands at the gas station being radicalized by his old work buddy.
I actually feel like I have to just have faith that everything will work out and our system can save itself.
I hope we don’t end up having to rebuild it all one day with some big nasty lesson we learn and then forget again.