Biden’s Militarized Inauguration Promoted Fear and Disunity

OPINION – Witnessing the massive overkill of security at the Biden Inauguration, and total lack of any regular people attending the event, was one of the most surreal experiences I have had. The fact that President Joe Biden made “unity” a major inaugural theme only made the event more jarring.

As I wrote earlier, the entire downtown area of our nation’s Capital was filled with unscalable 12-foot-high steel fencing topped with razor wire, barricades, and fortified checkpoints, manned by over 25,000 armed troops, and inaccessible to average citizens. Downtown DC was a fortress, and a ghost town.

In stark contrast, The New York Post noted that:

Abe Lincoln had fewer troops to defend Washington during the Civil War, even though the Confederate capital of Richmond was just down the road. LBJ used only about half as many troops to put down the 1968 riots that killed more than a dozen, injured hundreds and did property damage that lasted decades.

In addition to making one wonder how all this fear in any way promoted unity, the draconian security measures also made you ask – what was the expected threat?

One would think that Team Biden and the Democrats were expecting an army of tens of thousands of armed Confederates to invade Washington. Considering that only a few hundred unarmed rioters stormed the capitol on January 6^th, that would be a big stretch. And Democrats know it.

But that’s not the point.

The aim here is to create the optics of a nation under threat from one of its two major parties. Democrats are aggressively promoting the false narrative that the Republican Party itself is the threat to America.

In doing so they are creating the real fear of a one-party dictatorship that they spent four years fanning the flames about President Trump and the GOP.  Except the real threat is coming from the Democrats.

As Glen Reynolds writes in The Post:

Democrats no doubt hoped that the optics of this military-heavy presidential installation would convince ordinary Americans that the republic is in peril from the populist ferment that sent Donald Trump to the White House in 2016 and garnered more votes four years later than any GOP ticket, ever. It’s a peril that can only be addressed by, in James Comey’s lovely phrase, “burning down” the Republican Party. 

Accusing Republican lawmakers of “sedition,” challenging the “loyalty” of National Guard troops, and impeaching President Trump for “inciting insurrection” – after he has peacefully left office – is all part of the political theater to make Republicans themselves be seen as the threat to democracy.

With Democrats wielding de-facto control of the White House and both Houses of Congress, and possible plans to pack the Supreme Court with Democrat Party loyalists, plus a fawning, complicit media, this partisan narrative and strategy becomes even more dangerous.

Beware of Democrats with total political control urging national unity at the end of a gun.

Paul Crespo

Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Defense News. A defense and national security expert, he served as a Marine Corps officer and as a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at US embassies worldwide. Paul holds degrees from Georgetown, London, and Cambridge Universities. He is also CEO of SPECTRE Global Risk, a security advisory firm, and President of the Center for American Defense Studies, a national security think tank. - paulcrespo.substack.com - PAULCRESPO.COM