A lot of people have commented on the nasty and divisive racism that permeated Joe Biden’s speech to the Morehouse College class of 2024. Biden assured the grads that they’re entering a world that hates them and blocks them at every turn. However, that’s par for the Democrat course. What really struck me, aside from Biden’s obsession with himself, was the complete absence of any aspirational ideas. These graduates weren’t told to go forth and be wonderful. They were told to “abandon all hope, ye who exit here,” and that their only salvation was the government.

I have a hard time listening to Biden. His slurring, mumbling, and shouting, along with his reptilian appearance (it’s something around the eyes), irritate me. I do better when I focus solely on his words, which I found on the White House website. To spare you the agony of reading it, I've listed his topics in the order in which they appear. Take a minute to read them because a few things will jump out at you: 

• Morehouse’s founding after the Civil War.
• His bio (college, first marriage, adoration for MLK, Jr., stance against the Southern Democrats of Delaware, his wife’s death, and his son’s death).
• The pandemic.
• George Floyd and “a reckoning on race.”
• The endemic racism of America (dead black men, all black people having “to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot,” the country’s dislike of patriotic blacks).
• His commitment to ending racism.
• His son’s death.
• George Floyd, black men being killed, white supremacy, and systemic racism.
• The government pouring money into black communities.
• The government removing lead pipes.
• The government delivering high-speed internet.
• The government giving blacks 100 times more opportunities for blacks (jobs, loans, health insurance, prescription drugs, affordable housing).
• His “walk[ing] the picket line” for unions.
• His violating a Supreme Court ruling to erase student loan debt.
• His investments in black colleges.
• His policies sending money to blacks.
• His support for “peaceful, non-violent protest.”
• All the blacks in his administration.
• The equivalence of Israel and Palestinians—Israelis died but now Palestinians are dying.
• His call for a ceasefire after which the hostages should be returned.
• His work to bring peace to the Middle East.
• The fact that “extremists” are coming for the graduate’s freedom.
• The fact that people waiting in line to vote in Georgia are denied water. (This is a blatant lie, according to left-leaning Politifact.)
• Black election workers are being attacked.
• The “Insurrection,” at which black police officers were called racial names.
• White supremacy and extremists.
• Book banning.
• Blacks will lead us into the future.
• Oblique attack on Harrison Butker’s speech as toxic masculinity.
• What it really means to be a man (respect, dignity, showing up, avoiding hate, resisting abuses of being, faith).
• His certainty that the graduates will be doctors, researchers, artists, journalists, intellectuals, preachers, and politicians.
• His diverse administration, including Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kamala Harris.
• A final, brief exhortation to do something with their degrees, because they’re “capable of building a democracy worthy of our dreams” with “a boundless future” and “a bigger, brighter future that proves the American Dream is big enough for everyone to succeed.”

In brief, it was a typical Biden speech. A whole lot of self-aggrandizing and maudlin “me, me, me” stuff, blatant lies, and racial demagoguery. The only thing it left off was the line about “puttin’ y’all back in chains.” However, in addition to what was there, something profound was missing: Aspiration.

Aside from a single throwaway line, Biden had nothing to say about the singular blessings of the graduates’ newly acquired knowledge and the diplomas that prove that knowledge. He could barely spare a sentence for the great opportunities that await them after their four years of presumably hard work. The speech was focused, instead, on the horrors of America.

I bet that when you graduated from middle school, high school, college, or graduate school, the speech was about opportunity and the future. It promised you that if you applied your talents and worked hard, you’d succeed. Biden’s speech painted a dark, practically post-apocalyptic America in which the graduates will die...unless the government saves them.

Although Biden threw Jesus’s name around a bit, what Biden offered was a very different type of religious exhortation: It was the statement that America is a hellscape and that the government is those graduates’ only salvation. This was a speech that was simultaneously blasphemous and deeply, deeply un-American.

Since its founding, America has been premised on the idea that when people are unleashed, they are unstoppable. For a long time, America’s shame was that African Americans were leashed, first through chattel slavery and then through officially sanctioned, open discrimination. Joe Biden has a new premise: The only way for African Americans to thrive is if they willingly put their heads in the government yoke. Otherwise, they must abandon all hope.

UPDATE: In his extraordinary speech in the Bronx, Donald Trump inserted exactly the kind of uplifting exhortation that graduates need to (and used to) hear at graduations, for he spoke directly to young people about success: hard work, finding one's passion, and never losing momentum. This was the advice missing from the dour speech Biden gave about an unforgiving world and the government safety net.

Image: YouTube screen grab (edited).