The nation is about to be handed over to a band of fascists, and prime Democrats are merely rolling over and ready for the Republicans to tickle their tummies.
Donald Trump souvenirs are displayed on the market at I Love DC Items forward of the inauguration on January 16, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Photos)
On Wednesday, Joe Biden gave a farewell handle to the nation. Should you missed it, you’re not alone. Biden has been drifting off into the historical past books with startling rapidity, his presidency already diminished to a footnote between Trumpian chapters, his individual diminished to the purpose of irrelevancy.
As traditional, Biden’s message was spot-on. Channeling Eisenhower and his warning of the rise of an unaccountable “military-industrial” advanced, the outgoing president warned that America at present is more and more beneath the sway of the oligarchs spawned by a “tech-industrial complex.” These oligarchs, Biden famous, are utilizing the high-tech infrastructure they management to corrode the general public discourse, to confuse the general public as to what’s reality and what’s falsehood, and to intentionally promote misinformation, all in order that they’ll harvest extra energy and extra wealth.
Elon Musk’s private fortune now stands at near half a trillion {dollars}. Given the velocity at which it’s rising, he stands to grow to be the world’s first trillionaire within the not-too-distant future, along with his enterprise empire controlling the whole lot from the automobiles of the longer term to the satellites very important to civilian and navy infrastructure globally. That makes him a one-man superpower in his personal proper. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t far behind him.
Cumulatively, Trump’s cabinet and inner circle of billionaires is by far the wealthiest management cohort within the nation’s historical past, mixing financial muscle and political clout in a quintessentially oligarchal method. These women and men, some inside authorities, some merely cheerleading from the field seats through which they sit to benefit from the present, will, over the approaching years, use political energy to beget extra financial energy, after which flip round to make use of their financial energy to consolidate their maintain over the political course of.
As I stated, Biden’s message was spot-on. In spite of everything, one can’t have a look at Musk’s outsize, and fully harmful, present public position, his trolling of leaders world wide, his embrace of neo-Nazi politics, and never shudder. One can’t have a look at Zuckerberg’s craven embrace of Trump’s “If I say it, it’s true” philosophy, in addition to his hosting of inauguration day parties feting Trump, and never be horrified on the tech titan’s reincarnation as an enthusiastic midwife to fascism. However Biden’s message, delivered within the hard-to-hear monotone that has come to outline his picture, now not carries weight; the general public has lengthy since tuned the person out.
And right here’s the place I get actually indignant. Joe Biden had precisely one job when he assumed workplace after the 2020 election, and that was to craft a politics able to neutralizing the MAGA motion and all the extremism spewing forth from its chief’s mouth. He had one job: to do the whole lot in his energy to make it possible for Donald J. Trump may by no means once more get inside a mile of energy and will by no means once more use the ability of the presidency to launch a full-on assault on American democracy. And Biden screwed that up. Not by somewhat bit, however in a volcanic eruption of incompetence. He failed repeatedly and once more to promote his message, and, when it was clear the general public wasn’t shopping for what he was promoting, he then did not step apart in a well timed method to provide one other Democrat a viable probability of profitable towards a resurgent Trump.
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It represents one of the staggering shows of political malpractice within the historical past of democratic nations; and it’s one which I dearly hope the historical past books maintain Biden, who reportedly cares monumentally for his “legacy,” and his small circle of trusted confidants to account for.
100 years from now, I doubt anybody’s going to recollect the Inflation Discount Act, however they certain as hell are going to recollect Biden’s late-Weimar dance-of-ineptitude because the forces of darkness gathered to storm America’s citadel of energy. As a result of come January 20, Trump could have just about limitless energy, due to the Supreme Court docket, and on the identical time he could have a high-tech praetorian guard of social media tycoons magnifying his each phrase and attacking anybody who dares to face in his manner.
So though Biden is totally proper to warn of an impending oligarchy, he was mistaken to not apologize for dumping the nation within the mess it’s now in. The place was the humility, the acknowledgement of merely unfathomable political missteps over the previous years?
Talking of Democrats who aren’t precisely standing on the facet of decency or constructing a firewall towards extremism, the place are the senior celebration figures who’re prepared to absent themselves from an inauguration that can crown a would-be-tyrant, a convicted felon, a sexual abuser, as an unfettered, above-the-law president? To my information, solely Michelle Obama has had the braveness to absent herself from a ceremony through which a lawless man will swear to guard and defend constitutional authorities. Her husband, Barack Obama, final seen making animated small talk with Trump at Jimmy Carter’s funeral, will attend. So, too, will Invoice and Hillary Clinton. It’s a unprecedented act of legitimization for a person who has repeatedly unfold blatant lies or falsehoods about, to not point out threatened to imprison, or worse, these identical leaders who are actually pledging to attend his ceremony, and whose supporters would seemingly have gone on a violent spree had he misplaced the election in November.
Am I indignant? Hell sure. The nation is about to be handed over to a band of fascists and oligarchs; and prime Democrats, feckless past even my very own most pessimistic expectations, are rolling over and ready for the Republicans to tickle their tummies as an alternative of standing up for the idea of a pluralist, rationalist, empathic physique politic.
It’s MLK Day on Monday, a day after we usually pay homage to our pantheon of extraordinary progressive, radical women and men who’ve moved this nation alongside the arc of justice within the profoundest of how, even when confronted with the harshest types of repression. This MLK Day, I might be resolutely ignoring the awful information of the inauguration, and I’ll most actually be ignoring these Democratic leaders who’re making good with a person whom, lower than three months in the past, they accurately recognized as a fascist. As an alternative, I might be considering of America’s higher angels, and hoping {that a} new technology of Democratic leaders quickly emerges with the wherewithal to push again towards the Trump juggernaut.
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