A Closer Look at Biden’s Civil Rights Epiphany
I wrote last week about the cliche that is the epiphany. You should probably go read that, but in the event that you do not, here’s the skinny.
An epiphany is a Christian thing. It means the manifestation of a divine being but has also come to mean, in the secular word, a sudden moment of clarity.
Epiphanies manifest themselves in our public discourse through the loathsome phrase, “and suddenly, everything changed.”
But for those of us living in the secular world, epiphanies are a persuasive shortcut. Here’s why: a secular epiphany is essentially a total revolution of thought that happens instantaneously.
In contrast to the rhetorical device “peripeteia,” which means “a sudden reversal of fortune.” Peripeteia is NOT the moment when you suddenly started acting like a whole new person. Peripeteia is the event presented in the narrative or speech that puts into course the need for a decision, the possibility of changed action.
We can see the difference in President-elect Joe Biden’s August 2020 speech at the Democratic National Convention. See if you can spot the epiphany….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6s6qpzqMxE
History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes the stain of racism from our national character?
I believe we’re up to it.
I believe we’re ready.
Just a week ago yesterday was the third anniversary of the events in Charlottesville.
Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists coming out of the fields with lighted torches? Veins bulging? Spewing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s?
Remember the violent clash that ensued between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it?
Remember what the president said?
There were quote, “very fine people on both sides.“
It was a wake-up call for us as a country.
And for me, a call to action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run. My father taught us that silence was complicity. And I could not remain silent or complicit.
At the time, I said we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.
And we are.
Did you spot the epiphany? It was the phrase, “at that moment, I knew…”
I pulled a bit of a bait and switch on you. “At that moment I knew” is cliche cousin to “suddenly everything changed.” They’re used pretty much interchangeably. And it’s really bad when they’re used together. Biden could have gone for the full “suddenly everything changed and at that moment I knew” but he spared us and just went with one.
So you’re trying to tell me that this guy was Vice President for EIGHT YEARS and then watched Clinton lose and then watched Trump take office and it never occurred to him until the summer of 2017, “I must run for President of the United States.”
No way. Without even doing any research, I know for sure that can’t be true. And the reason I know that is because Biden used a cliche to mark his moment of sudden realization. Whenever I hear the phrases “suddenly everything changed” or “at that moment I knew” then I immediately know that there is a layer of superficiality there. People resort to those phrases because they either don’t want or don’t think they should take the time to actually work through how their thoughts and behaviors ACTUALLY changed.
Cliches are always mental shortcuts that cover over all kinds of complexities about being a human. The epiphany, in particular, covers over the complexities of persuasion, of behavioral and intellectual change.
Now I don’t know why Biden didn’t actually tell us about how he decided to run for President. I also don’t know that I care. It’s like, yeah, you were Vice President for 8 years, you probably have some good ideas. Watching Trump shit on the country for 4 years probably got your fucking motor going. You had a good chance of winning. The DNC liked you. So you ran for President. Makes sense. There’s no real need for an epiphany here because Biden running for President makes total sense.
It’d be like if you had gone to work as a banker every day for ten years. Then, on the morning of your eleventh year you woke up and said, “this morning I suddenly knew I needed to go to work.” It’s like, yeah, duh. Why wouldn’t you? Now, if you said, “this morning I suddenly knew I needed to be a dolphin trainer” then I’d understand the need for an epiphany. And, because it’s a drastic change of behavior that demanded the epiphany, I would need a LITTLE more information than just, “I woke up this morning and everything changed” because no one’s brain works like that.
And, as it turns out, Biden not only was probably thinking about running for President the MINUTE he thought about running for VP, he actually was thinking about it in 1988. 1988. Here’s the New York Times discussing what they call Biden’s “disastrous” 1988 bid.
“The next president of the United States: Joe Biden.”
It’s June 9 1987 and then-Senator Joseph R Biden Jr. has just entered the presidential race. Look familiar? The 2020 race is Biden’s third attempt at the Oval Office. He first ran for president 32 years ago. For those who may have forgotten or weren’t around in 87, here’s what happened.
Biden started off as a strong Contender. “Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delwarare.” But his campaign was mired with some early blunders, like this one: “What law school did you attend and where did you place in that class?” “Who cares?” “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.” And he exaggerated his academic record in law school. “I went back to law school and in fact ended up in the top half of my class.” And then there were moments like this, repeated later during the campaign. When I marched in the Civil Rights movement, I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes.” But he never actually marched in the Civil Rights Movement at all. Ultimately it was accusations of plagiarism in his speeches — ”I did not know that was Robert Kennedy quote” — that forced him to drop out of the race. “I made some mistakes.”
We have now learned two things. One: Biden didn’t have an epiphany during Charlottesville. He may have had his conviction renewed or been re-reminded of his mission or been given a renewed charge or whatever but have an epiphany he did not.
Two: we get a better understanding of what the epiphany cliche is doing for Biden. The epiphany recast Biden’s obvious lifelong interest in being the big P with social justice. Now, this strategy makes a lot of sense. We know that race politics were a deciding factor. We know that Biden’s appeal to non-white voters was a real area of concern. Of course Biden is going to want to bring up his commitment to inclusion and enfranchisement for Black Americans as often as he can.
That’s just a good strategy. UNTIL Biden uses a lazy-ass cliche to make the connection to racial justice. THEN he comes across as manipulative. And the epiphany gets WORSE when you hear some of Biden’s backstory about fibbing about being part of the civil rights march. And then it gets WORSER… when you take into account the weird stuff he said about ‘being loved by the Blacks’.
So the epiphany that Biden hopes will give you this sudden inspirational smack in the face about his love for Black America does quite the opposite. He would have been SIGNIFICANTLY better off actually having taken the time to really explain the twisty turny connections between racial justice and his bid for presidency.
And to really add icing on the cliche cake, Biden actually goes on in his DNC speech to precisely NOT use an epiphany, proving he’s perfectly capable of not taking the mental shortcut. Here’s the piece that comes right after his Charlottesville moment:
One of the most important conversations I’ve had this entire campaign is with someone who is too young to vote.
I met with six-year old Gianna Floyd, a day before her Daddy George Floyd was laid to rest.
She is incredibly brave.
I’ll never forget.
When I leaned down to speak with her, she looked into my eyes and said “Daddy, changed the world.“
Her words burrowed deep into my heart.
Maybe George Floyd’s murder was the breaking point.
Maybe John Lewis’ passing the inspiration.
However it has come to be, America is ready to in John’s words, to lay down “the heavy burdens of hate at last” and to do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.
Notice the difference here. Before, it was all about certainty. “I saw Charlottesville, and I just knew…” as if your brain just has an on/off switch and that is how it makes decisions.
But after his encounter with Floyd’s daughter, it’s MAYBE. Maybe Floyd’s murder was the breaking point. Maybe John Lewis’ dying was the inspiration.
In case you don’t know, John Lewis was a Civil Rights leader and Black politician from Georgia who died of cancer a few weeks before Biden’s address.
Now we can say what we will about Biden name-dropping dead Black men to make his bid for the presidency. Certainly it feels a little cringey — also it would have felt equally as cringey for him NOT to do it.
But what I’m focused on is that Biden ditches the epiphanies in this part of the speech and instead puts the peripeteia back where it belongs — in the events that happen outside of us.
Is Floyd’s murder a peripeteia, an intervention of fate, a sudden reversal of fortune? Maybe. Biden essentially leaves it open to possibility because it’s only going to BE a reversal of fortune if something gets done about it. THAT is not cliche. That is very astute. That is how life works. The events happen but their significance is in how we think and act about them — as Biden says, follow John Lewis, the “hard work” of rooting out systemic racism.
It’s time to do the work. Events don’t just happen and then lightning bolts of inspiration strike us from the sky. That’s why an epiphany is a cliche — because it’s a shortcut. It keeps us from doing the work. Do the work.
