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Biden urges America to see the reality of Jan. 6 – and understand its vicinity in history

John M. Murphy does no longer work for, consult, personal shares in or acquire investment from any enterprise or agency that might benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations past their academic appointment.
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President Joe Biden closed his speech commemorating and deploring the activities of Jan. 6, 2021, by means of asking God to “bless folks who stand watch over democracy.”
To “stand watch” is to stand protect, but as a metaphor, it runs deeper. To stand watch on a ship is to hold out a weather eye – to hold an eye fixed on the ocean and sky for capacity hazard. In this large sense, Biden’s cope with known as on Americans to look the obvious fact, to endure witness to the violence of Jan. 6 and survey the approaching threats.
As a student of presidential rhetoric, I pay attention to metaphors because they often display lots about the ideas, values and beliefs of unique leader executives and, indeed, of the state as a whole.
Biden’s speech of Jan. 6, 2022, is of hobby not most effective due to the occasions that caused its being essential, but additionally due to the visual language it employed.
The speech expressed a powerful religion in the apparent truth. It asked Americans to trust their own eyes. That reflects an extended philosophical tradition in Western lifestyle equating sight or light with the fact. Yet there’s usually been a countertradition, one that assumes real energy lies in the shadows, conspires at the back of the curtains.
Former President Donald Trump’s fondness for conspiracies is widely known – it turned into glaring in his pushing of the Obama “birther” lie and his reluctance to disavow the QAnon conspiracy.
It has additionally fashioned the view of many in his party that the 2020 election turned into one way or the other “stolen.”
In his speech, President Biden sought to disinfect the body politic with the light of truth. He did so in numerous ways.
Biden fashioned the state’s reminiscence of Jan. 6 by using what Americans saw that day. It was a violent attack, he said, an effort to overturn a truthful election and overthrow American democracy.
To make that definition brilliant, he again and again entreated target market participants, “Close your eyes,” asking them to see again what people noticed that day. A mob dragging, stomping, attacking police officers. Rioters the usage of flagpoles as spears. Confederate flags in Statuary Hall. A gallows at the Capitol garden, readied for the vp of america.
Recognize that violence for what it become, Biden advised. Ignore the excuses which have been made given that. See the fact.
Not handiest did the president ask the kingdom to see Jan. 6 genuinely, he also asked us to apprehend its region in records.
Biden asked the audience to observe Statuary Hall, the chamber within the U.S. Capitol from which Biden spoke. It wasn’t just a handy backdrop for his cope with. It is a record of records, symbolized through the statue of Clio, the classical muse of history, who stood watch over the Capitol and recorded all that happened there.
History noticed Confederate flags and knew that they had by no means appeared earlier than in this sacred area. History saw police death in protection of the Capitol and knew that had in no way came about before on this area. History saw, in Biden’s words, “a dagger at the throat” of democracy – a effective visible image.
History noticed the records – they had been undeniable and clear for all to see. The former president became defeated. He misplaced through thousands and thousands of votes. Republican judges and politicians rejected his conspiracies.
This is the visible language of democracy. Democracies, Biden asserted, face their issues and understand fact. They do now not fall sufferer to shadows or what Biden described as Trump’s “big lie.” The fact is right there for all Americans to look, simple and clean.
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