I Must Admit, I’m Dumb
During President Biden’s inaugural address, he said, “and I pledge this to you, I will be a President for all Americans…all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.”
For making that statement, I could call him a liar; accuse him of being a hypocrite; or conclude that he was incredibly stupid; but as an Evangelical Christian, all of those suppositions would be judgmental in nature and therefore, someplace I don’t want to go.
But if I can’t resort to any of those deductions, I’m left with recognizing my own stupidity, because I don’t understand how he could possibly do what he so clearly stated.
In an article I wrote for Spokane FāVS, during the battle to replace Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, I said how difficult it would be, for some people in power, to ‘fight’ for the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice that could drastically change the legal landscape on critical issues such as immigration, religion and government, abortion, global warming, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and many more.
As a Republican, my views differ significantly with our new President on these and other items. So am I to take his statement, that he’ll fight for me, to mean he’s going to find a way to align the laws and policies concerning these vital matters with my beliefs?
I cannot begin to comprehend how he could do that in light of the record number of votes he received from people who don’t share my views on these concerns. If he was even to embark down that trail, I could only imagine cries of ‘Impeach him’ from the left and ‘Hallelujah’ from the right.
So, if not these areas of American life, where else will he stand in battle on my behalf?
When he made the statement, there were no limitations, such as, ‘I’ll fight hard in the areas that we all agree on anyway’ or ‘I’ll fight hard if I can figure out a way to get both parties to agree on things they won’t agree on today.’ That seems to leave just those crucial areas of our existence that he might have been speaking of, and again, that brings me back to my dumbness because there’s no way I can figure out how he could do it.
Maybe what we need is a dialogue on this question. I don’t think you can state categorically what was behind his statement, unless you have some inside scoop, so we’d have to keep it in the “He could have meant…” genre. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on what he might have implied by those words.
