Joe Biden’s recent speech in Illinois for Clayco was a tangled web of lies, baseless self-aggrandizement, and attacks on the unvaccinated. Particularly the latter. If there is any speech that illustrates the total “othering” of the unvaxxed, the perception of the unvaxxed as selfish fools who have no right to make medical decisions for themselves, who are literally killing people and making everyone around them miserable, it was this speech. And I was struck, as I listened, with how much some of the ideas and even the rhetoric Biden was using were similar to the racist, segregationist, pro-slavery rhetoric of the 19th century Democrat Party.