“At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation, and I believe he will continue to do so. At least that is my fervent hope. I wish he would turn down the rhetorical excess in some cases because I think it undercuts the decision he ends up making. But in each case, in my view, he has made the right, rational, calm, deliberate decision.”
The above quote is an assessment of George W. Bush by Joe Biden.
Few democrats have expressed as much admiration for the deceitfulness and cruelties of the George W. Bush white house as has Joe Biden. It is possible that no other democrat had done as much to ensure the enacting of the worst predations which were deviously employed during the Bush years and then continued into the Obama and Trump displays of deceits and toxicities.
Biden’s career is hardly lacking of smug dismissiveness toward the priorities which are associated with people who think they are progressive. He has equated progressives with Trump supporters.
Biden seems to think he is a man of principles. If he has principles, they primarily seem to be dependent upon environmentally and socially destructive processes which militaristically protect and reward corporate malfeasance and control over humanity. To a great extent, this is the same as Trump. His difference from Trump seems to depend upon his ability to pretend that he not the cheerleader for injustice which he has been for most of his corporately sponsored career.
The rise of Trump’s abusive vanity into the white house is not disconnected from the machinations and lies of the fake bipartisan posturing used by republicans and the democrats.
Biden has said that he is intent on “restoring decency, dignity and honor to the white house.” When compared to his history, these words seem to be as genuine as Trump’s “drain the swamp” phoniness. It has also been pointed out that Biden’s words are an almost exact echo of the intentions stated by the campaign of George W. Bush in 2000. In 2000, Bill Clinton’s smarminess was the springboard for Bush. In 2020, Trump is Clinton’s replacement. The men have much in common.
I never guessed that dignity and honor could be distilled through a history of enabling injustice and slaughter. While it is true that intoxication can result from rotting of apples, it seems the democrats and republicans are together focussed on getting us to believe their debilitating intoxications are a form of nutritious exceptionalism.
There is a scene from an old Marx brothers movie which now seems to be appropriate to the democrats and republicans. In the scene, a woman is being embraced by Groucho and she tells him, “hold me closer, closer…” To this Groucho responds, “If I held you any closer, I’d be in back of you.”
Speaking of having each other’s backs …
There is a recent development in the 2020 presidential campaign which is most revealing – especially when you consider the aggressive militarism and widely expressed democrat impatient insistence upon being to the right of Trump’s vanity in regard to foreign policies pushing the overthrowing of numerous other governments. There have arisen(?) numerous republican efforts to get rid of Trump and to promote Biden. Among these are the
Right Side PAC,
Republican Voters Against Trump,
Lincoln Project, and
43 Alumni for Joe Biden PAC.
This last one has been organized by hundreds of supporters of and members of the George W. Bush presidency.
The 43AlumniforJoeBiden website is especially revealing. They call for the restoration of the same “principles” which they (correctly) believe are shared by Bush and Biden. They spuriously claim that Biden would restore “decency, honor, dignity and true leadership.” They claim to “look forward to a time when civil, honest and robust policy discussions are the order of the day.” I guess they are looking forward in the same way that Obama was looking forward – by ignoring the reality of their past deviousness and outright dishonesty. I can also only guess that “true leadership” means the ability to spin corruption into a cloak of obfuscation to cover the assaults on human rights while pretending to be “civil.” One of their supporters, Jennifer Milikin, says they, “know what is normal.”
So, to many republicans and democrats, Joe Biden is what is “normal.” It seems that “normal” means that it is (again) pragmatic to empower people who can disassociate themselves from their own history of predatory manipulations and can encourage other people to desperately clammer for more of the same sort of predatory manipulations internationally.
Surely, Trump is a major huckster, but the biggest scam he has helped pulled off is one which few voters seem capable of seeing. The elephant in the room indeed. It is the way he has participated in the democratrepublican-controlled elevation of other life-sucking, corporate sponsored, warmongering swamp predators (chiefly Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) as if they are (by supposed contrast) respectable. The only respect Trump, Clinton, Biden and their ilk deserve is the same kind of respect which one might show toward any devious and deadly predator – respect the fact that you had better put distance between yourself and them or you (and anyone you might care for) will, sooner or later, come to regret your foolishness.
“Nothing will fundamentally change.” This is Joe Biden’s promise to his richest donors. Clearly, this is music to the ears of many republicans and to the ears of democrats. The normalization of yet another Bush administration.
