Joe Biden’s Symbolic Legacy

As of this writing, the fiasco that is Joe Biden’s presidential campaign goes on like the worst SNL sketch ever, one saved to use very late in the night when most have the television turned off. A sketch among already shitty sketches thrown in as filler. Certainly not high caliber fare like Fred Garvin, male prostitute. So it’s a fitting end to this politician’s career. A lackluster man, truly one who reaped the benefits of his maleness, his whiteness, and his seeming ability to parrot “progressive” talking points while continuing to deliver nothing to citizens, but everything that was needed for the corporations. These businesses were able to parasitically and exponentially grow in his home state due to the favorable laws passed. He then extended the benefits of corporatism and usury to a national stage. This willingness to sell out being his main trait for political success, that and his golden leg hair, of course. This national toxicity was not enough, so he then took his golden years and used them to deliver death overseas, via no questions armaments, all the party favors you need to throw a genocide. This man does such things while unbelievably giving hubris-laden interviews bragging about having done more for Palestinians than anyone. This is the man who referenced Corn Pop, of course, so lying runs the gamut from the deadly serious to the idiotic. Truth never was a thing that came out of this man’s mouth, even when he was more coherent. In a functioning society, a man like this would be laughed at and disregarded while the serious business of making life better would fall upon empathetic and serious individuals.

Biden has done a lot of damage in his life. The perhaps saddest thing is that a guy like this on his deathbed will likely not lament the horrors he inflicted or feel shame in lost opportunities to assist others, no– he will probably go into that light smarmily self-satisfied. His was a life lived without much meaning other than self-aggrandizement and facilitating organized pilfering. I’m sure he will continue with a profound lack of empathy for people he could have helped till his dying breath (which he is generously sharing maskless with those near him despite this new COVID-19 positive diagnosis). He told multiple lies along the way that sometimes slowed him down, but always reemerged like the proverbial nuclear cockroach. The Democratic party apparatchik reinvented him as needed, with new generations of voters being duped into thinking this always toxic, never empathetic man was somehow going to deliver something other than the status quo. Often he delivered even worse, a deepening of the corruption (think Clarence Thomas) that has created such a difficult country to live in.

The clear fascism problem we have at this time is in no small part due to the policies and behaviors of politicians like Biden over the years. The past US fascism was often piled on others, but one knows that it will come home and haunt all eventually. This seems to be what we are seeing—a broadening of the scope, especially in terms of bodily autonomy and such. The misery of the nation has been ongoing for all who were perceived as outliers (think non-white or non-cis male) and was often simply outsourced internationally. In times of scarcity, it’s textbook that tight control and fascism rears its ugly head all over, though, and even those who thought they were free find out….well, not so much.

The working class grasps wildly when living conditions deteriorate, generally looking to blame a nebulous “other” and those in power gladly seize on this and facilitate it, knowing this keeps the heat off their asses. It’s not even a creative or new situation. It’s been done so many times before, even to the extent that it’s been given as the reason to know your history, so as not to repeat it.

But here we are in a wildly predictable repeat season. It’s like the writers just phoned this one in.

We have a situation now that which already somewhat superstitious types are being handed over a leader in many quarters they perceive to have been “saved by God” in terms of that missed assassination. Their enemy, who they believe is godless and evil, then gets another Covid smite and shows himself to be a doddering old fool every time he is seen in public. This is not how anyone will pull the country out of the jaws of fascism. In their eyes, it all looks providential and divine. But being the locust that he is, Biden won’t care what is left behind after him. In that manner, he is kinda biblical.

I do believe in that breakdown that about 25% of people are actively good, 25% are actively evil, and 50% can be swayed either way. We are seeing more and more of that 50% being swayed toward fascism because essentially there has been no clear benefit to not following those base instincts. It’s not as if a right-wing individual can say, oh well at least it was better for me under Clinton (or now Biden) in fact, sometimes it’s been just the opposite. The right has thrown crumbs their way and this is what they recall. It’s not as if they truly understand something more complicated like failure to expand Medicaid makes their local hospital disappear. No, they understand they had some cash sent their way during the pandemic when Trump was in office and with Biden they got a guy who lied, saying things like “you won’t get Covid if you are vaccinated”. Sure, their guy lies all the time, but it’s lies that are intoxicating for them. With Trump’s lies, they feel energized from having hatred mainlined into their veins. Biden’s lies just give people constipation and ennui.

I do live in the midst of many right-wing reactionaries. I’ve certainly seen them get worse over the years. I do know one thing about most of them, however. They need direct experience to have empathy (if it is to happen at all), and they need to be given direct experience to be swayed. It’s how they don’t really give a shit about abortion until they need one or they don’t care about racism until they have a biracial grandchild. It’s rather tragic that so many on the right are not empathetic in a big-picture way–it’s as if they can’t fathom a complicated relationship between a situation at hand and the workings that came together to create it, whether it is poverty, racism, etc. They look at the situation and want to find a clearly delineated evil/good narrative and it is often based on their own simplistic experience at hand. I always thought in this manner that Bernie yelling about inequality on their terms (as in hey, your local hospitals are gone because of x,y and z –you are getting screwed over) could reach at least some of them. Plain talk delivered with force. Sadly, we’ve seen how not exactly real the Bernie nonsense was. At this point, he’s not even calling for Biden to step down. Bernie clearly exists in a pre-approved framework, that Democrats want to merely exist, fund-raise, and enact no change other than move us continuously to a more corporate-friendly situation.

So anyway, discussing the reactionaries among us—I’m not saying that there isn’t a stage of radical that we might end up with where people are impossible to reach, but hopefully, change is still possible. No, they won’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts– they are in that malleable 50%, but they will change out of self-interest in many cases. In the midst of WW2 would anyone have predicted Germany and Japan would play out in the modern world as they did? Fascism can be reversed; it sure would be nice to have it occur without a true war in our case. But Biden and his ilk are delivering likely violence up on a silver platter through their toxic neo-liberal policies. The polls all show he is losing and he doesn’t seem to give a shit.

Our nation is in a hideous place. Hubris and neglect, violence and apathy. We find ourselves in a nation that has countries like China doing documentaries about our homelessness situation in the same manner our documentaries used to look at their dysfunction. Those of us who have been around awhile know that as terrible as the situation was for many in previous decades, that this is a new level of economic terrorism being enacted upon citizens. One misstep and you will be homeless, one misstep with credit, you won’t be able to get a decent-priced apartment, one misstep….that’s all it takes to fall off the tight wire. Young people work all the time just to attempt to stay above water and none of it is necessary when individuals like Musk can, without blinking, forward 45 million a month to a Trump super PAC. It’s to the point that money has no meaning to these billionaires; it’s now about sheer power. But money is still unfortunately a very real concept for Americans with lives coming apart at the seams.

Of course, the real way to combat this deteriorating situation is true results, clear messaging and distinct and measurable follow through. In short, everything Joe Biden’s career has not been.

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