Like millions of Americans, I was puzzled by the Former Joe Biden’s decision to address the American people in front of blood-red, ominous floodlights projected onto a National Park site, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, with two armed Marines standing guard like stormtroopers flanking Darth Vader. Equally surprising was Biden’s choice of text: a literal English translation of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauscescu’s last public speech in 1989, which ended in a popular riot that brought down his regime.

Watch the video of Biden’s remarks for yourself, and you’ll see what I mean. Very unusual choice, Mr. Biden. What exactly did you mean by that?

Voting Against Him “Threatens Democracy”

Okay, I’m kidding. Ceaucescu was scared, so his last speech was in fact much more conciliatory, unifying, and moderate than Biden’s fiery rant, which amounted to a declaration of war on half the country. Those who voted for his political opponent are a “threat to democracy.” Any questions about election integrity, if posed by Republicans, are illegitimate acts of sedition that undermine our Republic. Those who ask them are “Election Deniers,” a term carefully chosen to evoke “Holocaust deniers,” in a shockingly crass political cheapening of the murder of 6 million Jews.

How a Real U.S. President Speaks

You know who never made a speech remotely this divisive? Abraham Lincoln.

Not in his first inaugural, when seven states had already seceded from the Union and started to form a new, hostile country, rather than accept him as president. Go read his first inaugural address, which is a piece of sweet, winsome reason attempting to win over his critics, or at any rate calm them down by addressing their legitimate concerns.

Nor in Lincoln’s “Proclamation 80,” issued after the Confederacy had already been formed, and fired on Ft. Sumter. In the course of calling for 75,000 militia to volunteer and invade the seceding states, Lincoln never demonized their inhabitants, or even their leaders. He promised that

the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

Nor in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, delivered when the Civil War had already claimed many hundreds of thousands of lives, and threatened his own capitol, Washington, D.C., with possible capture on several occasions. Lincoln did not rail at the defenders of slavery who sought to dissolve the United States and waged war against it. Instead, he said of both sides in the conflict:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

…

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Nor in the Gettysburg Address, where Lincoln spoke within sight of the recently dug graves of more than 50,000 Americans on both sides who had died in a single battle as part of a Confederate invasion of the North, did Lincoln resort to the rhetoric of scapegoating and hatred. Instead, he said:

[W]e cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

So speaks a legitimately elected leader of a deeply divided nation who actually honors all its citizens and seeks to unify them, as Joe Biden falsely promised at his own inauguration.

The Angry Protests of a Criminal Caught in the Act

But Joe Biden was never legitimately elected, and he knows it. That’s why he’s so shrill, defensive, and angry — like a thief caught in the act. Beyond all the election night shenanigans documented by 2000 Mules and other journalistic inquiries, he knows about how state laws were changed or simply flouted to allow mail-in balloting, easy to fake.

He knows how a massive conspiracy of media outlets suppressed the facts about his son’s laptop, rife with proof of Biden family corruption. He knows — having read it in TIME magazine — how billionaires, local election officials, social media monopolies and most major media colluded to skew the 2020 vote.

And he knows that half the country realizes all this and scorns him. The participation trophy that is his senile marionette presidency is forever tarnished, will go into honest history books with an asterisk. And he hates us for realizing that, and daring to speak it.

The Threadbare Puppet of an Oligarchy

Biden doesn’t actually govern, and knows that too. He is the rapidly spoiling meat puppet of an Oligarchy that conspired, so far successfully, to suppress the people’s will. To impose on them forced vaccines, pointless and health-destroying lockdowns, mass euthanasia by COVID in nursing homes, illegal open borders and a shameful surrender in Afghanistan.

To strip them of affordable energy. To deny them their constitutional right to legislate protection for unborn babies, or children rendered sexually confused by drag queen acts and pornographic indoctrination in their schools. To lavish their money on a pointless war in Ukraine, whose only apparent purpose is to kill and cripple Russians. To transfer the debt burden of Queer Theory graduates onto the backs of plumbers and cops.

Biden knows Americans don’t want these things, but his orders from The Top are to impose them on us for our own good. So he must demonize, criminalize, and finally terrorize the opposition.

Biden Stakes His Claim as Superlative

Not only didn’t Abraham Lincoln speak in such contemptible and un-American language. No Confederate leader did. Slaveowners fighting for the “right” to buy and sell human beings never sank to Biden’s level.

And in that sense, Joe “President” Biden really has made history. He will be remembered for … something.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”