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The No Change Presidency
After a month as president Joe Biden has already broken several major campaign promises.
There will be:
- No $2,000 checks.
- No minimum wage rises.
- No student debt forgiveness.
- No halting of deportations.
- No end of the war on Yemen.
- No return to the JCPOA.
As Alan MacLeod summarizes:
Biden began his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in June 2019 at a Manhattan hotel, telling wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” under his presidency. After one month in office, it appears as if that is one campaign promise he is likely to keep.
The U.S. will also continue its wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
We are left to guess where, not if, Biden will start another one.
Looking back over comments, aside from the unsurprising discovery William Gruff is a narrow-minded prude who can’t grasp that not everyone is emotionally wrecked by the thought of anal sex, there are perhaps four strange ideas that keep recurring.
1)Somehow the VP matters in the US system. George H.W. Bush may have because of the left over connections with the CIA and because Reagan was a ignoramus. And Cheney did, because George W. Bush was both an ignoramus and a drunk (and still struggling even when he managed to stay dry.) The idea Harris is the puppet master is mostly chauvinism and race-baiting. If anyone is going to, ultimately, puppet master, it is Dr. Jill. You know, like Nancy Reagan when the Alzheimer’s was really kicking in. Biden managing finally to get in as a kind of VP succeeding the P is something of a political outlier. So far from Biden being the natural successor, he was first beaten by Clinton, and they had a time getting him past competition from, of all people, a self-proclaimed socialist and a gay guy, to even get nominated. But he’s in and not until he’s comatose he’s THE MAN in an elective quasi-monarchy. Whether or not he’s senile or crooked or cracked or some combination thereof *doesn’t matter.* It didn’t matter for Nixon, Reagan, Bush or Trump, all of whom were questionable as genuine functional human beings. Actual policies and administration are very rarely initiated by presidents, who are salesmen, not thinkers, not doers, not leaders, not managers, not administrators, not original, and maybe not even competent (Truman, Reagan, George W. Bush, Trump.) It is the flesh of the kind that matters, not his mind.
2)The unspoken assumption that Biden is revealed after four weeks by people who couldn’t draw conclusions about Trump after four years is remarkable, in a bad way. It is true that Biden was for a candidate remarkably honest about how he is conservative and doesn’t want to really change things. I expect minimal competence in the status quo *at best.* I don’t like the status quo, but it can always get worse, the way Trump made things even worse. Again, the idea that Biden is proved rotten by continuing Trump’s policy is not a criticism that should be made by Trumpers. Even for them that is remarkably shameless.
3)The situation in foreign affairs is not the US is dominated by Jews, which is more cryptofascist crap, no matter how popular it is around here. *The tail does not wag the dog.* Zionism is a real force, but Christian Zionism favors Israel partly because they are pleased enough if Jews have some other country than the US. So, no, the Jews are not the great conspiracy running the show. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forgery.
4)Propaganda is potent but it is not mind-obliterating. Despite the joy in abusing the filthy masses for being stupid, it’s no good imagining all powerfl propaganda dehumanizing the masses. Look, we’ve all indulged in rants about fools because we’re all human which means to err and also we’ve been paying attention. But despite lapses, you really do have to use your better judgment. That judgment should tell you that the great power of propaganda is not to render people mindless robots relentlessly implementing the program. The real potency lies in the ability to confuse. Even more, behind the apparent power of propaganda to preserve obedience to authority is not positive belief, not even confusion, but a quiet despair that nothing can be done. That the only true recourse is a quiet retreat into private lives and satisfactions. WHen people at large get the idea they can actually change things, they awaken politically. They will talk politics, real politics, and those politics will be left wing, far more left wing on average than the supposed terrors. When the people move, the squad will not be rejected as the fraud squad. That’s a right wing canard devoid of meaning as well as truth. But the supposed left will be revealed as not very left, not very popular.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 20 2021 17:06 utc | 110
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