After promising to restore "unity" to Washington in his Inaugural Address, President Joe Biden signed more executive orders in his first two days than President Donald Trump signed in his first two months. Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, appear to have little appetite for bipartisan compromise.
As a result, Biden and his Democratic colleagues are struggling to accept the fact that saying the word "unity" over and over again may sound nice but that actually uniting the country would require unifying actions that run contrary to the political interests of the Democratic Party.
In a Washington Post report headlined, "Biden struggles to define his 'unity' promise for a divided nation," Democratic lawmakers were hard pressed to offer a coherent definition of the word. One of them, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.) went so far as to compare the concept of "unity" to that of pornography.
"I'll know it when I see it," Hickenlooper said when asked to describe unity. "Isn't that what they say about pornography?" The senator was referencing the subjective definition of obscenity proffered by then-Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart in a 1964 case involving a French film about adultery.
It should come as no surprise that Hickenlooper used a conversation about uniting the country as an opportunity to discuss pornography. He has repeatedly discussed the time he watched the legendary adult film Deep Throat with his own mother during a trip home in college.
"She said, 'I'd love to go,' because she didn't want to be left alone in the house again. So I took my mother to see 'Deep Throat,'" Hickenlooper told the audience at a CNN town hall event in 2019. His mother was "mortified" upon seeing the X-rated film but insisted on staying for the duration. She even complimented the movie's "very good" lighting on the drive home, Hickenlooper said.