The Skinny: Biden His Time Edition
The Skinny: Biden His Time
Unity with Who Tho, Joe?
Look, my mainstream liberal friends and acquaintances accuse me of being unfair, exaggerating, or even outright lying when I say that Pig Empire neoliberalism directly enables, even breeds, fascism and that rich liberals would literally rather work with fascists than share; but how how many more “mask off” moments have to happen before I can say “you’re not just uninformed, but rather willfully blind” here?
Take for example this baby-killer beauty pageant sh*tshow we just watched yesterday; newly minted American president Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony. This nationally televised event represents literally the first moments of the Biden presidency, and every mutant wonk reject is on my TV saying “this will set the tone for the next four years.” It won’t. Inaugurations are usually forgotten by the end of that first hundred days everyone considers so crucial to a new president, but this isn’t my fairy tale; the media, the lanyards, and the politicians all profess that this is an extremely important event for the country.
Wankery aside, what it definitely is however, especially after we’ve just spent the past two and a half months trapped inside Trump’s slow-motion chicken coup, is the first opportunity for Joe Biden and his administration to control the messaging that will define the early phase of his presidency. Trump and his doomed coup attempt were taking all the oxygen out of the room until now; forcing Biden to react even though the outgoing Swine Emperor had clearly lost the election. Inauguration day then, was the first time Biden would have the presidential pulpit all to himself; so even if I think the pageantry and fake-Camelot bullsh*t was a bit much – this was still a more important day than usual, for the incoming US government.
And what, pray tell, was the overriding, and unmistakable message that Biden, his staff, and the neoliberal intelligentsia chose to offer America on his very first day in office?
“Unity.”
You heard it from the talking heads, a couple days before the inauguration. You heard it from Democratic Party strategists the day before the show kicked off. You heard it from the speakers, including of course, President Biden; f*ck man they even made that poor 22 year old poet laureate, write a goddamn poem about unity. It was unity, unity, unity, every five minutes, on every mainstream liberal channel, all day long. Furthermore, on those rare moments when the message briefly wasn’t “unity,” it was instead about “healing the wounds” in our society and why honest, decent, humble Joe Biden was just the man for the job.
Okay then, well I got a couple of questions for not only Joe Biden, but all you smart folks among the elite liberal thought leaders and lanyard class as well, if I may:
Unity with whom, exactly? And healing the wounds caused by whom, folks?
Do you mean we should seek unity with fascists Joe? I mean you did effectively call Trump a fascist during the campaign, didn’t you? Hell, I’ll go all of you folks peddling this nonsense one better; not ten days ago the entire liberal political and media classes were talking about domestic terrorists, attempted murders, and GOP Senators and Congressmen who might have been “in on the job” at the Capitol Hill riot-turned-pathetic-coup-attempt. Are those the people we want to unify with today Democrats?
I mean tell me if I’m misunderstanding something; we are talking about unity with Trump-loving white supremacists and an openly fascist Republican Party here, right? So you elite liberal thought leaders want unity with the almost seventy-five million people who just willingly voted for a fascist; and not a secret fascist either, a guy your candidate and your party identified as a fascist while campaigning against him? You’d like unity with people who literally voted for kids in cages? You people are actually saying we should strive for unity with people who literally threatened an insurrection with Covid lockdown protests, likely resulting in even more dead people?
Wait, I know Mr. President; perhaps you want unity with the roughly two-thirds of Republicans that literally believe, or at least publicly indicate they believe, the 2020 election was a fraud and you stole it from Herr Donald – those people Joe? The insurrectionists? The rioters? The guy who wanted to murder Nancy Pelosi? The dude who brought zip ties? Proud Boys? White supremacist militias? Unity with those folks, Joe? I know, you’re talking about unity with GOP Senators and Congressmen who just inspired a f*cking insurrection. Let’s have unity with them; after all, it’ll be hard to pass corporate bailouts and tax cuts for the rich without them. Is that what you folks are telling me?
Maybe, you instead meant unity with the 22 million folks (and counting) willing to publicly admit to a pollster they’re white nationalists? I think you’ve picked some great people to “unify” with there guys; nazis, terrorists, collaborators, actual traitors, liars, conspiracy theorists and folks who’ve literally straight up murdered people for their delusional fascist fantasies; whether on purpose (Proud Boys,) or because they just don’t give a f*ck (lockdown protesters.) It’s apparently hugs and forgiveness all around for the Pork Reich and their enablers, no matter how much blood they have on their hands, or how many graveyards they fill.
And what of the people that actually got you elected Joe? What do poor people get if nazis get hugs, healing, and “unity?” That’s right, a crap sandwich; f*cking Simon Says games about two thousand dollar checks and nonsense about an extremely diverse cabinet of Goldman Sachs lackeys, war criminals and vulture capitalists. What do Civil Rights activists and Black community leaders who literally washed your racism clean and ultimately made you president get, Joe? They get told to sit down and shut up because you, by yourself, beat Donald Trump; or that’s the story you’re going with. What about those antifascist and anti-racist kids who manned the barricades this summer, fighting nazis and murderpigs, while you coddled white supremacists and equivocated about looters and anarchists? What do they get sir? That’s right, incarceration and brutalization by fascist cops – those folks you told bizarrely told “shoot suspects in the legs,” around about the same time, remember Joe?
It’s literally been one goddamn day, less than two weeks after a fascist coup attempt, and Joe Biden, the Democrats, and the neoliberal corporate media have all said, openly that they’d rather coddle fascists, white nationalists and suburban nazis, than share with poor people. Plain as f*cking day, that’s what they just said to you. Never forget that when the liberals tell you they crave a return to normalcy, what they mean by “normal” is the neoliberal authoritarians, and the fascist billionaires, working together to f*cking murder broke people just like you, for profit.
Even after a failed fascist coup, the class war never ends; Joe Biden isn’t trying to hug it out with white nationalist Republicans because he deeply respects bipartisanship – he’s trying to patch up holes in the capitalist alliance against an unruly American labor class threatening to stop behaving like a commodity.
It’s just that simple.
Palooka Joe, Lanyard Amnesia & the Rise of Camel-not
Look, I don’t know who the hell these corporate media muppets think they’re kidding, but this Camelot redux myth-making around Joe Biden is bullsh*t, and quivering Pig Empire propagandists have clearly caught a bad case of amnesia. The other day, I literally saw one of these mutants on my TV, go full on rapture while babbling something about beams of light extending from Palooka Joe’s arms while he embraced America; which sounds like the kinda sh*t you’d hear on State news in a racist Sacha Baron Cohen movie about Arab dictators.
His “historically diverse” cabinet of ghouls, warmongers and bankers aside, Biden is the same decrepit, babbling, pasty mummy he was last year, when even liberal media gleefully lit him up like a goddamn roman candle. He’s the same guy he was when Kamala Harris basically called him a cracker on live TV. He’s the same guy he was when Tara Reade levelled credible sexual assault allegations against him during the primaries. He’s the same guy he was when liberals pointed out his cognitive decline.
As even mainstream, liberal media outlets were happy to report when it looked like Biden wasn’t going to ever be president, he’s the same guy who was proud of working with segregationists, and happily eulogized infamous racist Senator Strom Thurmond. Becoming president doesn’t change the fact that Joe was one of the primary Democrat architects of the monstrous, and racist, mass incarceration program in America. It doesn’t erase his disastrous votes for forever wars and an expanding police state either.
I could keep going; he’s the same embarrassing plagiarist he was before he won the nomination, the same bald-faced liar who keeps pretending he marched during the Civil Rights movement and was arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela, the same man who repeatedly lied about his own voting record in office, and the recorded policies of the Obama administration, during nationally televised debates. He’s even the same guy who said “you ain’t Black” if you don’t support him against Trump, and called a college aged voter a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” while responding to a relatively simple and straightforward question.
Let’s just cut the crap here, alright? Before Jim Clyburn laid his magic hands on Palooka Joe in the lead up to the South Carolina primary, and former President Barack Obama told everyone else to drop out and endorse Joe before Bernie won the whole damn nomination contest, Biden was a 4th place, mumbling old white guy no-hoper who’d already tanked two presidential runs. New VP Kamala Harris did even worse, dropping out after it was clear she’d get hammered in her own state. John F. Kennedy, these folks ain’t.
The reality here is that Joe Biden is a caretaker president, beholden to the Democrat Party’s donor class, who lucked into a run against a historically unpopular, openly fascist reality TV show host, who’d just put a quarter million (at the time) Americans in the ground, while pretending COVID-19 wasn’t real. This guy is going to be a one term president who does whatever the f*ck Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex tells him to, while preparing Kamala Harris for her 2024 primary run.
If that Ichabod Crane-looking mutherf*cker makes your calves quiver, I strongly advise you to start dating outside your Columbia Heights circle immediately; and for the love of all that is good in this world, please stop sharing that sh*t on Twitter.
Of Course I Loathe Joe Biden
Quite frankly? You’re goddamn right I’ve got a lot of built up rage about Joe Biden, and the next mutherf*cker who tells me to “give him a chance” like he’s a visiting space alien who hasn’t spent the better part of the last forty years f*cking up all our lives in various ways, might end up catching some hands. I mean for the love of christ folks, Joe Biden has been in government for almost every waking moment of my entire life; how would you say that’s working out so far?
Furthermore, it’s not really just about holding a grudge either. Yes, it’s true that Joe Biden’s ideas, ideology, and policies are actively harming the labor class to this day, but even if I didn’t already hate him for his leading role in pursuing neoliberal reforms that literally tore the heart out of my hometown, I certainly haven’t forgotten Palooka Joe’s mendacious bullsh*t from this election season just past; even if perhaps Joe and the septuagenarians running the Democratic Party have.
Hey, do you remember that time Biden went on TV and just straight up lied his backside off all night about his voting record, his policies, and his opponent, Bernie Sanders? How about that time when his campaign told old people it was totally safe to go out and vote for Joe in person, well after public health officials had said it clearly wasn’t? If you knew they were all lying, and that people might literally die because of those lies, would you still be angry at the boss a few months later?
Of course, once the neoliberal establishment had stiched-up Bernie and gotten Palooka Joe over the hump in the primaries, we were all treated to several weeks of triumphalist taunting and the ritual humiliation of the left. That might make any person angry under normal circumstances, but the fact that you muppets did it while insisting that anything but complete surrender to neoliberal domination was effectively a vote for a fascist that you folks elevated and then lost to, remains infuriating.
Alright, so clearly, Joe and I didn’t start off on the right foot. After forty years of policies that directly impacted my life in an extremely negative way, near infinite lies, and a crooked as hell nomination contest, it’s only natural I’d have a hard time coming around and seeing the new Palooka Joe, right? Surely, once summer hit, as anarchists, anti-racists and soccer moms were battling violent reactionary murderpigs, and neonazi vigilante militias, we’d find common ground – right?
That’d be a nope. Biden’s position on antifascists protecting Black Lives Matter protesters from neonazi thugs? The anarchists should be locked up. On the BLM protesters themselves? Well the soccer moms might be ok, but riots and “looting” (a racially coded dog-whistle if ever there was one) should result in prosecution; which I guess might be a reasonable position if you weren’t offering it in the middle a fascist cop war on peaceful protesters. Defund the Police? Hell no, Biden’s solution to cracker pig violence & murder is to give them more money; which has coincidentally been his solution to every police issue his entire career.
Given all of that, and noting that I just spent the last six months writing almost exclusively about fascism in America, I think you’ll find that I’m not very receptive to arguments that I owe Joe Biden a clean slate because he happened to be the guy who ran against Trump. Furthermore, in light of the fact that Palooka Joe is trying to mend fences with fascists, and not leftists, even as we speak, I suspect he knows this already; even if myopic liberals who just want to go back to brunch do not.
Stupid Pet Tricks: Covid Checks Edition
A lot of people who apparently don’t read the newspaper very often, ask me why I “despise and mistrust” rich liberals so much, and quite frankly the question utterly baffles me. I mean, I just literally watched Joe Biden essentially negotiate against himself until he slashed promised two thousand dollar relief checks to fourteen hundred dollars, and then while moving in lockstep, every corporate media outlet in America started playing Simon Says to help justify the president breaking the very first promise he made after getting elected, before he’s even inaugurated. Why in the world would you be surprised that I don’t like, or trust, these people?
I mean, are you folks f*cking kidding me? Joe Biden said help me win the Senate and I’ll get you two thousand dollar checks. Newly minted Georgia Senators Warnock and Ossof said elect us, and we’ll immediately get to work on sending you two thousand dollar checks. Everyone in the damn party said two thousand dollar checks and typed that sh*t out as “$2,000” on Twitter. Now y’all wanna go back and pretend that was really a promise for fourteen hundred dollar checks, to top up the paltry six hundred bucks Mitch McConnell agreed to? That’s bullsh*t, and pretending it was always that way is pure gaslighting; something the media is not supposed to do on behalf of the president, but here we are in liberal consulting class paradise, I guess.
Frankly, this is getting awful close to “that depends on what the meaning of ‘is’, is” here. Did Biden explicitly lie? No, not really; much in the same way a used car salesman who offers you a rebate “up to X dollars to trade in your old car” and then gives you half that, isn’t explicitly lying. Did Biden and the rest of the Democrats deceptively use language in a way that made most people expect an additional, two thousand dollar check? You f*cking betcha – and don’t tell me that was an accident either, because I disbelieve; they were sure happy to literally say “two thousand dollar checks” when they wanted to win Georgia, weren’t they?
To be honest with you the fact that we’re even having this conversation, is repugnant. Keep in mind that while these media muppet stenographers are out here online playing Words With Friends, folks who’ve been dodging Captain Trips are going under on the regular; yeah what Biden said is dishonest, but more to the point that mutherf*cker now has control of all three branches of government – he could pass damn near any relief provision he wanted to; it doesn’t have to be fourteen hundred dollars, or even only two thousand dollars, nor does it have to be a single check. Everyone else in the Pig Empire got ongoing, regular financial assistance already, except the United States, and the death toll just crossed four hundred thousand people – none of which apparently matters to bougie boutique progressive opinion columnists who think snatching six hundred bucks out of poor people’s mouths is perfectly acceptable, because Biden never said the word “additional.” Quite frankly, under those circumstances these f*cking word games do not impress lads; one might even describe them as callous, or monstrous.
And before you start clucking at me about letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, pragmatism, or any other liberal incrementalist excuse-making nonsense, can I remind you that they, the government, gave rich people and corporations like over a trillion dollars? And that’s not even counting the gobs of money the Federal Reserve rolled through the banking system and directly into the pockets of speculators right before all this Covid sh*t actually jumped off – don’t you remember? The crisis hadn’t even actually hit yet, and these brain geniuses still found a way to keystroke up infinite hot money to bolster investor confidence and save the market, for like an hour? So do not f*cking tell me the government can’t spare the six hundred additional bucks for poor people, because if my last name was Koch, you’d have the money you maggots, and you damn well know it.
You know, I knew Biden’s faux-supermajority was going to be a joke, and I had no expectations that you neoliberal ghouls would actually help poor people under the gun in a boiling neofeudalist hellhole; but I forgot how f*cking annoying it is watching too clever by half lanyard muppets try to patronize me with nonsense equivocations and infantile word games. The fact is, when people open up those checks they’re going to remember they just got stiffed for six hundred bucks in the middle of the plague apocalypse, and none of the bullsh*t you apologists and bootlickers type on Twitter is going to change that one bit. Unlike bougie New York opinion columnists with close ties to Democratic Party politics, the labor class can’t pay their rent in hot takes.
Same Bus Stop, Different Driver
I must confess that the early days of the Biden presidency have me wondering exactly how many times I can entitle a new article “Same as the Old Boss” before my readers start throwing things at me. Take for example the always Orwellian subject of US foreign policy, and the recent outlines on what Biden’s foreign policy positions are going to look like; including those we received from our new, Israeli apartheid-loving, soon-to-be Secretary of State, Antony Blinken on day one of the Biden Regime.
First up, the US State Department would like you to know that China is its number one concern going forward; which is funny, because I’m pretty sure I heard the same thing out of Trumpite mouthpiece Mike Pompeo not more than a year ago. As for those tariffs against Chinese products the noeliberal elite assured us are harmed the US economy more than China’s? Those are mostly staying in place for now.
OK, but given that the US and China are global superpowers, maybe that’s all understandable to a certain degree. What about Iran? Well Biden has said he wants to restart the Iranian nuclear treaty, but he’s also not prepared to offer Iran anything for its trouble, and at this time the White House is merely considering removing some, but not all of the genocidal sanctions Trump levied against Iran to try and goad them into a war – although that could change in the coming days. Understandably, Iran hasn’t exactly been impressed with Biden’s overtures so far; but that too could change, especially if the US appoints a new special envoy to Iran.
Well, that’s certainly not promising is it? Nor are the rumblings that Biden, a guy who on the campaign trail specifically talked about “ending the forever wars,” is looking for a way to get the US back into the multi-faceted military quagmire that is Syria; although not necessarily for the purposes of enacting regime change. On the upside, there’s also been some chatter about Biden’s intention of backing off the U.S.-Saudi Arabian alliance in a potentially big way, and why ending US support for the genocidal war of extermination the KSA is conducting in Yemen isn’t the same as actually ending the war, it’s a necessary step along the way to that ultimate goal.
Sticking with the MENA region, we find that Palooka Joe’s positions on Israel & Palestine are a very mixed bag. On one hand, the US is promising to restore some bare minimum of humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees living under Israeli occupation. While this will probably anger hardliners in Israel, it is objectively good that the United States isn’t actively helping to starve Palestinians to death anymore, now that Trump is gone; crippling poverty under apartheid rule however, remains fine.
On the other hand, Blinken assured us that the US has no plans move its embassy in Israel from Jerusalem; the conversion of which to the capitol, was an act of Israeli settler colonial aggression strongly supported by Trump, and roundly criticized by Biden and all the same folks applauding Biden’s foreign policy today. Surprisingly enough, sanctions to halt the annexation of occupied territory, or illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, simply didn’t come up in Blinken’s review; I guess he just forgot.
Biden’s foreign policy on North Korea appears to amount to “we’ve got our eye on you buster,” which, when you remove all the bluster and tweets, isn’t really all that different from Trump’s foreign policy and it sure as shit does not sound like peace. The situation with Russia is similar, but reversed; here Biden promises more bluster against Putin than Trump, but ultimately the same belligerent anti-Russia policies as the ones Pompeo installed.
Hell, if you’re looking for perhaps the ultimate example of an objectively harmful, imperialist policy Biden is carrying over from the Trump era, look no further to our never ending forever coup attempt in Venezuela. One of the first announcements Biden’s State Department made in the run up to the inauguration was that it would recognize CIA-puppet failed-usurper Juan Guaidó as the rightful leader of Venezuela; despite the fact that he’s never won an election and Nicolás Maduro is clearly still President
Look, I could go on here for a while, but it doesn’t exactly take a genius wonk-lord to realize that a foreign policy built around rebuilding Pig Empire alliances, getting back into the game in Syria, and leading from the front on foreign policy, doesn’t jibe very well with promises to end the forever wars, reign in Saudi Arabia, and push Israel towards a (purely impossible) “two-state solution.” Biden’s foreign policy is as incoherent as Trump’s, because it essentially is Trump’s foreign policy.
Sure, Biden is rejoining the Paris accord, he’ll probably have better relations with Europe, and several key Five Eyes partners do seem to like him more than they liked Trump; but none of that matters a bloody lick to folks who want peace and human decency. Our NATO partners are just as bloodthirsty and ambitious as we are, and Biden is keeping all the horrifying imperialist parts of Trump’s “America First” openly nationalist foreign policy almost entirely intact.
So much for “build back better,” I guess…
– nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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