The
Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two
themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the
presidency, centering on the destruction of American democracy if elected, and
secondly, a positive domestic record of the Biden years with several notable
benefits for the American people including jobs and wages, climate, energy
policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs.
What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so
from Democratic Party advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of foreign
policy, only a deafening silence. It is as if the leadership of the Democratic
Party wants the voting public to forget that there is a world out there beyond national boundary. And it has good reasons to adopt this evasive approach,
especially in an election year.
And yet this national posture seems strange as the US has so
heavily invested in military capabilities to secure its global dominance in the
decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. And as
a consequence, finds itself currently engaged controversially in the wars
raging in Ukraine and Gaza.
It
appears that even Biden is reluctant to claim credit in national settings for
US support of Israel and Ukraine and prefers to speak in generalities about
the greatness of America as a country whose future is bright except to the
extent dimmed by the threat advent of Trump and Trumpism.
This
tendency to ignore the world should be more troubling to American voters than
even Biden’s refusal to leave the presidential stage in light of his thinly
deniable disabilities of age and mental health that have put his 2024 candidacy
in peril. Such an evasive pattern gives voice to absurdly grandiose, yet
distorting, assessments of the present broad political situation.
Biden’s speech on the 3rd Anniversary of
the January 6th Insurrectionary attack on Congress is a typical example. After
a lengthy, persuasive recital of warnings about the Trump menace, Biden offers
some unhinged general remarks, starting with his oft-repeated startling expression
of personal faith in the future of America: “I have never been more optimistic
about the future of our country.”
No
explanation is given for why this is so, and there could not be one even if
Orwellian tropes were relied upon. No mention of the dubious wars, massive
homelessness, dangerously large inequalities, an epidemic of mass shootings,
growing migrant tensions, backsliding on carbon emission and the related rise
of extreme weather events, or numerous signs of rising risks of future major
wars with China and Russia, quite possibly prompting the use of nuclear
weapons, of deeply disturbing erosions of academic freedom often accompanied by
punitive encroachments on dissent and freedom of expression, as well as the
bitterest and most divisive societal polarization since the Civil War.
I
confess that I have never in my life felt more pessimistic about the future of
the country. At least one would have expected a self-professed liberal such as
Biden to be forthright about addressing the unmet illiberal challenges that
have been rampant during his years in the White House, and a program to do so
if Democrats are given a mandate to govern in November.
Biden also was immaturely boastful on the same occasion. “We’re
the greatest nation on the face of the earth.”
And
possibly betraying his uncertainty immediately added these words but no
specifics, “We really are.’ Then proceeded to display the kind of hubris long
associated with the twilight period of past declining empires.
Counter-historically Biden observed that “We know America is winning. That’s
American patriotism.’
It
underpins the broader claim that evokes doubt and opposition outside the West:
“There’s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than
America…Just remember who we are. We are the United States of America, for
God’s sake.’ Remembering who we are, or have become, is the ideological leader
of the (il)liberal democracies of the West who mostly lent a helping hand to
Israel while it in recent months carried out a genocidal assault on the
helplessly vulnerable 2.3 million civilian population of the tiny Gaza Strip.
This
American-led complicity in what much of the world’s peoples perceived as a
transparent genocide was even proclaimed as such in the rationale articulated
and policies pursued by Israel’s political leaders and put into deadly practice
by its armed forces. While claiming to be “defending the sacred cause of
democracy” Biden doesn’t respect the citizenry sufficiently to acknowledge
Israel’s policies face unprecedented challenges at the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), offering neither an
explanation nor an apology.
We
must ask ourselves whether such a failure to include the citizenry in
evaluating foreign policy that much of the public dissents from is in keeping
with an existential commitment to democratic styles of governance. Or for that
matter, whether cooperative security arrangements and friendly relations with
the governments of India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others can be reconciled with
the goals of promoting a democratizing world.
US democracy has from the founding of the republic almost 250
years ago been associated with a constitutional arrangement that stresses the
division of and balance between the three principal branches of government as
supplemented by the guiding idea that even the acts of the president are not
above the restraints and accountability procedures of law.
Currently,
both of these vital pillars of a functioning democracy are crumbling, and near
collapse. The US Supreme Court has never been so out of touch with the values
of society and the defense of its democratic character, not only by its denial
of women’s reproductive rights but in relation to upholding the rule of law in
relation to the behavior of the president and the regulation of corporate
wrongdoing.
Congress,
in many vital sectors of public policy, has become captive to well-funded
lobbying pressures and the interests of the wealthiest American leading
commentators to argue that plutocracy has become a more accurate description of
the form of government than democracy, to be optimistic in the face of such
developments has all the appearances of playing the role of the fool.
For me, an unmistakable indicator of the alienation of the
governing process from the citizenry is the extension of a bipartisan
invitation to the embattled Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to
address a joint session of Congress later in July. This bestowal of such a
signal honor on a foreign leader for whom ‘arrest warrants’ have been
recommended by the habitually cautious ICC, will be further enhanced by a
meeting with the President in the White House undoubtedly accompanied by a TV
moment exhibiting harmony between these two leaders that includes unconditional
support and a profession of shared values.
Such
an inappropriate gesture of approval is a slap in the faces of those many
American opponents of Israel’s policies in Gaza over the course of recent
months, especially a show of disrespect toward young Americans who protested on
university campuses across the country, and for their activity experienced
police brutality and professionally harmful punishments from educational
administrators, themselves under pressure from donors and politicians.
The
Netanyahu invitation is an edifying metaphor that confirms the dark foreboding
of skeptics like me critical of the US global role since the end of the
Cold War and deeply pessimistic about the future of the country. From such an
angle, Biden’s off-the-wall optimism and the tactics of the Democratic Party
establishment are not reassuring. Rather I find these patterns as strong
evidence of dangerous forms of escapism from the uncomfortable realities of
national circumstances and stubborn show of a failing leader’s vanity.
-CounterPunch
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