I stayed up late last night watching Thomas Frank on Anti-Populism, Plus Biden's Most-Stoned Moment Ever | Useful Idiots. This is a regular YouTube show hosted by Matt Taibbi and Katy Halper. The bulk of the episode was the interview with Frank, but there was also a powerful segment discussing Biden's apparent dementia. There was another brief clip of Bill Clinton speaking at the recent John Lewis funeral.
The episode highlights some contradictions in the current political environment:
- Biden has some remarkable similarities to Trump. He blusters incoherently.
- Bill Clinton was arguing against Black Lives Matter anti-police rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign. Speaking like that today would get most white people "cancelled". Yet, in being against Trump, many BLM supporters are now allies with the Clinton-Biden camp of the Democrats. Democrats such as Biden and Bill Clinton are allies with traditional black civil rights leaders such as Clyburn and John Lewis. Biden and Clinton pushed the 1994 crime bill that symbolizes the get tough on crime attitude that is resisted by BLM. Mainstream Democrats across the country proclaim solidarity with BLM.
- Mainstream Democrats have become vigorous defenders of the status quo, seeing Trump as the problem since he refuses to accept the validity of the mainstream media and other "experts".
- Mainstream Democrats have embraced the demonization of Russia based upon "leaks" from intelligence agencies. This is consistent with the anti-populist tactics of the 1890s and 1930s. "Liberals" defend and promote the "experts" even as they have been proven wrong again and again, in matters ranging from hydroxychloroquine to Russiagate to the 2003 Iraq War to the repeated financial bubbles and the 2009 Great Recession.
The mainstream discourse across the American empire is dominated by anti-populist hysteria, even as our technocratic society falls apart due to its own failings.
Personally, I approve of what Bill Clinton has stood for since becoming a major public figure and representative of mainstream Democratism. He's stood for common sense, for the most part. However, the times have changed and the current imperative is for the country's leadership to change accordingly. Most crucially, we need more class based politics, with government support for those who need it the most including especially the working class. We need less identity politics and international bullying. These are my personal opinions.
So Bill Clinton and Joe Biden are anachronisms -- politicians who represent issues from a different time. The current time demands action on labor, the environment, and peaceful/lawful international relations, as well as simplified universal health care, infrastructure, and social services. Bill Clinton is fine as an elder statesman who has much wisdom and perspective to share. But what in God's name is Joe Biden, who is older than Clinton, doing as the Democratic presidential candidate? He's a demented figurehead put up to stop the populists. He has no coherent policies on labor, identity politics, or foreign relations. He's solely a marker for the status quo, and hence is supported by moderate Republicans as well as moderate Democrats.
His supporters see him as providing a bridge to a new generation of leadership. I see him as a tool of the status quo, intended to prevent change until such time as the elite can regain some sort of coherence. However Biden is so weak that he may not win the election, which will undoubtedly be heavily contested via the legal system. Even if he does somehow take office, the contradictions noted above will still be around, and chaos may prevail until such time as the military takes control. A best case scenario, perhaps, is that someone like Gretchen Whitmer emerges as a Putin like figure who leads the nation with a firm grip out of the chaos into which we have fallen. (Update 9/1/2020: It's more likely to be a military or "intelligence" person who is in the right place at the right time to lead us out of chaos.)
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