Submitted by Pachamama
As the coalition of forces gather with their vested interests of displace the American fascist dictator, Donald Trump, on a civil warlike political battlefield, it is becoming quite clear that people who call themselves ‘progressives’ will only awake to the machinations, political tricks, being conjured and to the tectonic shifts under the battlefield when it is far too late. Such a re-imagining of American politics, as neoliberalism was the remixing of economic policies, must of necessity, leave ‘progressives’ out in the cold.
We are estimating that this Democratic-led coalition which is likely to emerge from a possible victory will lurch much further rightward than progressives are generally imagining. For Joe Biden is merely running as a Democrat but intends to rule as a Republican. This is all he has known all his life. Being a conservative Democrat means being a Republican. Same as Obama, there are few differences between factions within the duopoly. Biden has never been known to instinctively done anything progressive in his whole life. Above all, politics is about slicing and dicing as an acceptable method of gaining power, not being a fountain of virtue. Not interfering with the hideous structural infirmities on which the country has been built. This is representative of Joe Biden to the bone!
Therefore, it would be irrational to expect a man like Biden to approach, for example, the misanthropically inspired symbology represented by the ‘Star Spangle Banner’, the national anthem, which glorifies slavery in one of its verses. Or revisit the 13th Amendment of the constitution which still legalizes slavery for people in America’s dungeons, 80% of whom are of colour. Need we go on?
Then, the question which progressives will never get answered is – how could he ‘Build Back Better’ on such a flawed foundation? All Biden really wants to do is to get back to how things were before Donald J. Trump was thrown up by the political culture as if those represented halcyon days for Afrikan-Americans, supposedly his most dependable bloc. That’s all!
But, who are these people generally referred to as ‘progressives’? Well, they could be any motley bunch of political gradations from the far-right to the far-left and in-between. To the far-right they may include Republicans who support the logic of climate change and even never-Trumpers. To the far-left they may be communists, antifascists, socialists or even Trotskyists influenced by the lesser of two evils logic.
In this scenario, Joe Biden would, in effect, be the ‘unwitting’ savior of the Republican Party which is likely to be devastated by a massive defeat, if current polling holds true and in the event Trump is unable to complete that well-planned dastardly act currently underway. Should Biden be buoyed by the winds of a fierce national and overwhelming determination which forces Trump into having no other choice but to leave the White House, even to the point of duress if deemed necessary he saves the Republican Party. In so doing, he would be serving the hordes of Republicans seeking asylum within the Democratic Party as a way of making sure the indispensable other half of the American political duopoly survives Trumpism – the Republican Party.
When we look back at the presidency of Trump, in this scenario, it might appear as though a level of master planning, by hidden hands, paved the way for Biden. He could have the prefect landing to enable him to jettison feckless progressive operating under the assumption that this Democratic Party’s ‘donkey’ will take them somewhere. In addition, Biden could have a highly conservative Supreme Court; a Senate which could be Democratic led but more than willing to serve his less than obvious conservative agenda and a House of Representatives acting likewise with muted or sporadic objections from its progressive caucus.
In these circumstances, the LGBTQ identity politicos, who played such an enormous role during the Obama administration, would not be able to co-exist with the Republican elements within the Biden Coalition, absent the few Log Cabin Republicans. If Biden is faced with a choice between these political forces, there is little doubt that he will go with his new-found friends for the fear about defections of the Republicans may cause too much imbalance within his coalition. He will seek to equalize that action by resting on the logic that the LGBTQ forces generally have nowhere else to go.
The same thinking holds true for Afrikan-Americans, Hispanics, and other progressives who will have nowhere to go notwithstanding the presence of a fledgling Green Party with a presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, and up to maybe a 100 other people seeking the presidency. Defections of progressives are likely to be deemed as merely a temporary setback. Afrikan-Americans should not expect this reformulation of political forces within neoliberal capitalism will deliver any of Biden’s promises about ‘Building Back Better’ and so on. Nothing will happen but talk, until after the election when the drift to the right becomes public. Observers however, can see what a Biden administration will look like right now by the examination of his teams of advisers. To us such expectations are the equivalent of asking a dead man to change his will and expecting it to happen.
One good thing about Biden is that he has dared to locate himself as it to remove the scab from the old festering wounds making America the fascist state it might have always been and/or to which it has now degenerated for all to see. Of course, he was well assisted by the ongoing demonstrations throughout the country and being a politician there was a need for a response that made sense in order to garner the votes of Afrikan-Americans, women, progressives, young people etc.
In some ways Biden has been sheltered by Whiteness and a hyper focus in the country on what is wrongly seen as a cultural anomaly, the Trump presidency. However, the deeper truth is that Biden will never fix, or even start to fix, in eight (8) years, what was consolidated over four centuries.
Guided by history, only the total and complete destruction of American empire can satisfactorily settle these deeply divisive issues, correct all the fundamental social problems that have been termed ‘original sins’. Some contend that this fatal option maybe better that Biden’s return to an abnormal normalcy. Progressives should have long recognized the existential forces at work and found ways to insert someone more able to deal the rebuilding that has to happen and therefore avoid this Biden misdirection.
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