The other day, I received an email entitled “September 9, 2022: Team Joe Newsletter.” It included a few lines from the wretchedly divisive speech Biden gave in Philly last week. As I read those lines again, I thought: What hokum! And that thought led me to look up the word on the Merriam-Webster website, which, in turn, led me to the definition of “bunkum.”
"Definition of hokum
1: a device used (as by showmen) to evoke a desired audience response
2: pretentious nonsense : BUNKUM
Biden’s speech, like Biden’s mind, is full of both hokum and bunkum!
“America must choose: to move forward or to move backwards?” says Biden. But how do we know which way is forward and which way is back? Letting hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants enter the country: Is that moving forward or back? Wiping out the debt that students had promised to pay: Is that moving forward or back? Vilifying tens of millions of Americans as “extremists”: Is that moving forward or back?
Biden says we must choose: “To build the future or obsess about the past?” Paying reparations to the descendants of slaves: Is that about building the future or obsessing about the past? Removing the names of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Wilson from public buildings: Is that about building the future or obsessing about the past? Don’t our views of the past largely shape our views of the future? The two are linked. It’s not a question of either/or. People on the Left like to talk about America’s “reckoning” with its past. Is THAT about obsessing about the past or about building the future? If we change the phrase “obsess about the past” to a less loaded phrase, such as “reassess the past” or “deal honestly with our past,” then we might have a useful conversation: about reparations; about the names of schools; about Democrats and Republicans.
It’s not all that easy to separate our views about the past from our views about the present and the future. They are, after all, connected. A continuum. Crass politicians like Trump and Biden deal in gross simplifications and generalizations. Nothing subtle. Nothing complex. Nothing paradoxical. Nothing that requires actual thinking. But they do provide us with a lot of hokum and a bunch of bunkum.
