President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secy. Lloyd Austin at Arlington National Cemetery, 5/27/24

When then-U.S. Senator John Edwards campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003 and 2004, one of his main themes was that “there are two Americas,” meaning those who are well-off economically (or who don’t face discrimination based on race, religion, gender, etc.), and the rest of us. Edwards was correct, but there is also another major divide in America: the divide between the political right and left. That right-left political divide often shows up, for example, in the “news” sources that people choose, from the powerful Republican media machine (Fox “News,” Newsmax, OAN, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, etc.) on the right to a smattering of blogs, which cannot compete with such Republican machine, on the left. And nowhere was this right-left political divide more on display last weekend than in the Memorial Day messages from President Joe Biden and his upcoming election opponent, Donald Trump.

President Biden, the father of a son who served in the military and who died prematurely (though he was not killed in combat), displayed his well-known patriotism, compassion and decency in his Memorial Day speech, given at Arlington National Cemetery. Some of Biden’s quotes included: