Most of the time, a president’s State of the Union speech is avuncular. I wouldn’t say paternal because, as we know, paternalism is next to patriarchy is next to women as sexual objects is next to Adam noticing that Eve was naked.

The point of a president presenting himself as everyone’s favorite uncle is to sell us on the idea that all is well in the Land of Oz: “all friendly like” as Eliza Doolittle put it.

But obviously, right now in Bidenomics America, everything is not under control. So forget Uncle Joe. It was Biden the Barbarian, politics red in tooth and claw, on Thursday night.

Naturally, the president started out by bellowing that the U.S. is beset by enemies, foreign and domestic.

What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.

It’s Putin abroad and insurrectionists at home. And I am sure that if Biden had ever cracked a book in his life he would have continued:

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more.
Or close the wall up with our wokey dead.

But was the whole speech about the dastardly enemy? Not at all. There is another side to Biden, and we got it in spades. If you are a friend of the regime then you will get bennies, tons of them. Here is a partial list:

Cap “the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it!”

Cap “prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for everyone!”

“an annual tax credit that will give Americans $400 a month… to put toward their mortgage”

“My Administration is also eliminating title insurance fees for federally backed mortgages.”

And on and on.

Now, if you are a member of the Woking Classes I am sure that Biden’s speech had you down at the local organic café flashing your sustainable light saber for all the world to see. But what does it mean?

Fortunately, we have a German thinker to explain the whole procedure to us. I am talking about Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. In The Concept of the Political he wrote:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

Hey! Let’s check the German version:

Die spezifisch politische Unterscheidung, auf welche sich die politischen Handlungen und Motive zurückführen lassen, ist die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind.

Get it? Politics is always and only about friends and enemies. Now check out Google’s Ngram. Schmitt is soaring in the charts. The last data point is in 2019, and I learned about Schmitt in 2020.

Carl Schmitt is not the only wise philosopher with a word to say about Freund und Feind.

There is Mao Zedong: Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?

Then there is Peruvian dictator Óscar Benavides: For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law. Paging Jack Smith, Letitita James, Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis!

Then there is Curtis Yarvin: There is no politics without an enemy.

But I think that my maxim is best of all: Soft power is gifting friends; hard power is fighting enemies.

What are all these philosophers saying? They are saying that one of the deepest human instincts is the need to join with our friends to protect our homes against robbers and our land against enemies. Back in the day the men rallied to the village Big Man to go out and fight the enemy: and to the victors, loot and plunder. In our sophisticated era, of course, our rulers prefer to conscript men to go get trench feet in Flanders fields and give the survivors VA benefits. President Biden:

That’s why I signed the PACT Act, one of the most significant laws ever, helping millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins and who now are battling more than 100 cancers.

Politics is always and only about friends and enemies. So, for our Democratic friends, the foreign enemy is Putin and the domestic enemy is insurrectionists, backed up by the usual race-card pejoratives: racist sexist homophobic transphobic far-right extremist -- according to taste.

Also, the friend/enemy distinction for our wokey friends is encoded in the Allyship narrative, that we wokies are the Allies of the Oppressed Peoples fighting against the White Oppressors.

For Republicans the foreign enemy is illegal aliens at the border and the domestic enemy is the deep state and gangs and criminals in the cities. But we would rather join Ronald Reagan in rhapsodizing about the shining city on a hill:

in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

Enemies need not apply, Carl mein Freund.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Gage Skidmore