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Showing posts with label Joe biden On A Roll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe biden On A Roll. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Joe Biden: "If You Start Me Up, I'll Never Stop " [? !!] - UPDATES 01/27: Biden's Focus Is On Climate Change !

 


Mike took that picture from the park in front of us during a lull in the wild wild storm we just made it through, and talk about wild, that was one for the books.  We lost power only once due to a pole being blown down by the howling winds over on Cantil, the roof is still on, but mucho flooding around us and freezing cold.

Other than that, we have been making plans for several much needed major home improvement projects for the New Year and watching as Joe Biden flips the books on Trump. Due to the increased insecurity here  and an increased schedule of projects, I still have not decided whether or not I will return to instant replays of the drug war in our region.

 Speaking of that subject, two people were executed in their home in neighboring Baja Malibu, and there was more gunfire at SADM close to where Mike took the picture a few nights back. Not just a little, a lot. It's spooky and it is happening up and down the coast. Tijuana is inching up to and may reach 150+ people executed this month.  All of that information, plus national and international events including both AMLO & Carlos Slim coming down with the COVID Virus go here:

 

Zeta Tijuana 

 

You may already be aware that they have opened up vaccines for COVID in San Diego for folks 65 and older. What we found is working for us is going to the Von's pharmacy instead of trying to get through to our primary physicians.  Mike had the first Moderna shot, the second is scheduled in another 28 days; I am on the waiting list.  But, I wish they would hurry up, have been reading that Moderna may have to develop a booster shot due the variants, and I'm not particularly thrilled to be going grocery shopping unprotected without a shot anymore.

 

Joe's On A Roll...

 

 ~ From Politico:

 The First Hundred Days 

 

 
More current:
 
UPDATE / edit 01/27: Adding these on Biden's focus on climate change above and beyond the Paris Accord and the Keystone Pipeline:

 ~ From the New York Times:

 
 
 
 
 ~ From CNN: 

 
 
 
 "President Joe Biden on Wednesday continued his executive action blitz with a package of orders aimed at addressing the climate crisis along with a new memorandum on scientific integrity.  
 
"Today is climate day at the White House, which means that today is jobs day at the White House," Biden told reporters as he sought to tie his environmental push to American job creation.

Here's the executive action Biden took Wednesday and what each item does:

'Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.' This order seeks to cement the climate crisis at the center of US foreign policy and national security. Most notably, it directs the secretary of the interior to pause on entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters.

The order also:

  • Instructs Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to prepare a national intelligence estimate on the security implications of the climate crisis and directs all agencies to develop strategies for integrating climate considerations into their international work.
  • Establishes the National Climate Task Force, assembling leaders from across 21 federal agencies and departments.
  • Commits to environmental justice and new, clean infrastructure projects.
  • Kicks off development of emissions reduction target.
  • Establishes the special presidential envoy for climate on the National Security Council.

'Executive Order on Establishing President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.' This order reestablishes the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Moving forward, the council will advise Biden on policy that affects science, technology, and innovation.

Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity. This memorandum charges the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy with the responsibility of ensuring scientific integrity across federal agencies

Agencies that oversee, direct or fund research are tasked with designating a senior agency employee as chief science officer to ensure agency research programs are scientifically and technologically well founded.

Is this Biden's first action on the climate crisis?

No. On his first day in office, Biden signed executive actions to rejoin the Paris climate accord and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.

He also directed agencies to review and reverse more than 100 Trump administration actions on the environment.

What's next for Biden's climate agenda?

Biden also announced Wednesday that he would be calling on Congress in the coming days to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels.

"Unlike previous administrations I don't think the federal government should give handouts to big oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies," he told reporters.

Biden will additionally host a Leaders' Climate Summit on Earth Day, April 22, and the US will reconvene the Major Economies Forum.

What executive action is expected tomorrow?

Health care is set be the the theme on Thursday with Biden planning to rescind the Mexico City Policy and review the Title X rule on abortion referrals. There may also be an executive action on Medicaid, as well as the initiation of open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act."

 

 ~  From Informed Comment:

Biden to Have Feds Buy 650K Electric Vehicles, Promising Rapid Fall In EV Prices 

 

 

 "Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden plans to create a million auto-worker jobs by replacing the enormous fleet of some 650,000 vehicles owned by the federal government with electric cars. He specified EVs that emit no carbon dioxide, which suggests he wants the government to buy pure EVs like General Motors’ Chevy Bolt or the Tesla 3. So reports Kate Duffy at Business Insider. Biden called it the biggest government infrastructure procurement program since WW II.

In the United States, 650,000 EVs is a lot. Sales of all kinds of EVs (hybrids, plug-in hybrids and pure electric) in the U.S. were expected to reach 1.6 million in 2020.

Biden’s step is important because of Wright’s Law.” Aeronautical engineer Theodore P. Wright posited in 1936 that “for every doubling of airplane production the labor requirement was reduced by 10-15%.” The falling labor requirement means falling production costs.

So Biden’s big buy, along with an expected huge ramp-up of EV sales to private consumers this year and next, will likely lead to a significant cost reduction for electric vehicles. GM already has made a battery breakthrough that should allow it to sell EVs more cheaply by 2025 and possibly by 2023 than gasoline automobiles.

Biden pledges to put $5 billion into research and development in bringing down battery costs, which could also impel an explosion of electric car buying. He will also restore tax breaks for EV buyers and will award new tax credits to Tesla and GM. Further, he wants to put a network of thousands of fast-charging stations around the country. Some states, like California, have similar plans, so that the federal and the state programs could complement and accelerate one another.

A lot more EVs could have been sold in the US in 2020 if more had been available. But never fear. Rolling Stone’s Jesse Will previews 12 new EV models coming this year, and some predict nearly twice that many.

Some analysts suggest that electric cars are not as green as they seem, because they use electricity from the grid, and the grid is sometimes dirty, using e.g. coal. But EVs run cleaner than gasoline cars even in heavy coal states like Pennsylvania, studies have shown. Further, some EV owners have solar panels on their roofs, and don’t depend on the grid. And another thing. Coal plants are closing like crazy and over the life of an EV the owner can expect it to burn cleaner and cleaner (not true of a gasoline vehicle). In my own Michigan, the proportion of our electricity from coal has halved from 65% in 2010 to some 35% today. (And, I have solar panels anyway). As for the carbon used to make EVs, that is becoming cleaner too, with the advent of e.g. green steel.

Biden wants the EVs bought by the government to be made mostly in the U.S., not just 50%. It seems to me that the big beneficiaries of that policy would be GM, with its Chevy Bolt, Ford, and Tesla. Ford’s big entry is an electric Mustang. Wouldn’t it be a lucky USPS delivery guy that gets to drive one of those!"

—–

Bonus Video:

Bloomberg: Biden’s EV speech"

 

Well, this is rocking my world...keep at it Joe ! 😎

 

 

end edit.

 

~~~~~ 


 
 
 ~ From NBC:
 
 
/ Source: Associated Press
 
 
 
 
PBS:
 

 

 

~~~~~

 

Most important, keep an eye on:

 

Democracy Now ! 

 

Democracy Now|Immigration 

 

And remember,  most Republicans are against Impeaching Trump.  Here's a good one:

 

 ~ From Informed Comment :

 Did America Really Duck The Dark Night of Fascism ? the Delusion of Normalcy That Haunts The United States 

 

 

 

"The election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States was received across much of the world with a mixture of relief and exuberance, though often laced with apprehension. A common theme in news headlines and Twitter feeds was that normal service was being resumed in the US and in international affairs.

In France, the newspaper Le Monde ran with the headline: “American Elections 2020: Joe Biden’s victory sparks huge relief in Europe.” On Twitter, Paris’ mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted out: “Welcome Back, America.” In Germany, the cover of the news magazine Der Spiegel depicted Biden putting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty back on the torso (referencing an infamous cover from 2017 that depicted Trump severing the head). The image is accompanied with the ironic text “Make America Great Again.”

The theme of an American restoration was repeated in news and social media across the world. The symbolism is strong, but it is less clear what is being restored. In this it echoes the “return to normalcy” theme in Biden’s election campaign in the US, a nostalgic nostrum that vaguely promises a reset of American principles and policies. What is at issue in these desires to go back to a pre-Trump America?

In the US, the desire for normalcy surrounding the election of Biden reflects an existential anxiety – that Trump ignited a devastating attack on liberal democracy that may prove epochal.

The contradictions and tensions in American liberal democracy have been forcefully revealed with his presidency, which took advantage of the gap between declared liberal values and political reality. Trump not only exploited that gap, he spoke to latent desires and emboldened expressions of identity in both politics and people that had long been marginalised or silenced.

With Trump’s ousting, the liberal desire for a return to normality has been amped up via the figure of Joe Biden. It was clearly articulated by the new president at his inauguration, in his pleas for national unity and his promise to end the “uncivil war” in the US. David Sanger, in the New York Times, noted that: “Mr Biden’s inauguration was notable for its normalcy, the sense of relief that permeated the capital over an era of constant turmoil and falsehood ending.”

But there was little that was normal in the scene of a scaled-down inauguration taking place with only a handful of socially distant, masked participants and surrounded by the militarised landscape of a post-riot Capitol. The image was not of national healing but of a national emergency.

Accompanying the desire for normalcy and sense of relief is the implication that the “Trump era” was an aberration, a temporary deviation in the natural political order of things.

This is an attractive and tempting palliative for those who resisted Trump’s spell and disavow the significance of his political rise and appeal to millions of Americans. In this view, Trump was “the cat in the hat” – an unwelcome visitor and unruly avatar of instincts for disorder, evicted once the parents return. Enter Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

But Trump (and Trumpism) was and is something more than a temporary eruption in the order of things or mere symptom of a malaise in American public life. Trump unleashed the libidinal forces of “illiberal democracy”, undermining America’s commitment to constitutionalism, the rule of law and individual rights. He supported these forces in the US and encouraged them elsewhere, transforming the landscapes of American political culture and foreign affairs in ways we are still trying to understand.

American myopia

Americans pay little heed to external perspectives on their country and by and large do not respond well to critical views of it or of their leaders. That may be viewed as stubbornly patriotic, but it is more fundamentally due to a deep-seated ignorance founded on a myth of national exceptionalism, a myopia that is quintessentially American.

Trump’s presidency should remind Americans of the fragility of the social and political order that so many take for granted. Is it not a little shocking that Americans should need to be reminded of this? Perhaps not, perhaps the amnesia is a component of the American worldview, which commonly displaces the most serious challenges to democracy on to others elsewhere.

As the American writer Tom Wolfe once quipped, the “dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Of course, “it can’t happen here”.

Might it be that the importance of Trump’s election and presidency has been better or at least more readily understood in other countries where there is a living memory of the pains of populist authoritarianism, where people are more familiar with how reality can be dismantled?

The Slovenian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon suggests as much when, in the wake of Trump’s election, he commented:

In America, a comfortable entitlement blunts and deactivates imagination – it is hard to imagine that this American life is not the only life possible, that there could be any reason to undo it.

Hemon filters his perspective through his experiences and insights from living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war “through a time when what cannot possibly happen begins to happen, rapidly and everywhere”. Observing the disorienting impact of the early days of Trump’s presidency, he wryly notes that: “‘Reality’ has finally earned its quotation marks.”

Reality did indeed earn its quotation marks in “Trump’s America”, a fantasy world in which Trump supporters imaginatively and emotionally invest. It’s a world in which conspiracy theory and social media combine to create an alternative reality, a world that is self-contained and self-reinforcing – and impervious to facts.

Galvanised by Trump’s near messianic leadership, the fantasy has become pervasive and is deeply embedded in the imaginations – the fears and desires – of millions of Americans. It cannot simply or swiftly be undone.

Back to reality

“America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it”, Biden stated in November as he introduced his foreign policy team. The “America is back” refrain has been repeated ad nauseum by Biden’s surrogates in the past few months.

What it means in terms of policy remains unclear. More symbolically, it is declared as a rebuttal of Trumpist foreign policy, infamously sloganed as “America First”, suggesting a renewed era of US global engagement and leadership. But the meaning remains open and opaque and, as Julian Borger observes in The Guardian: “How a slogan as all-encompassing as ‘America is Back’ is received around the world will inevitably be a Rorschach test for what is perceived to be the ‘real America’ that has been absent in the past four years.”

The perception of what constitutes the “real America” is both a domestic and foreign policy dilemma for the US. Assumptions about liberal democracy at home and about a liberal world order abroad are no longer acts of faith.

As we head into a “post-American world”, global enthusiasm for democracy cannot be assumed, nor can the ability of the US to set an example, for that has been undone by the spectacles of civil unrest and the disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The domestic “uncivil war” will, as political scientist Francis Fukuyama warns, have “consequences for global democracy in the coming years”.

Biden’s foreign policy team are talking up democratic solidarity between states as the basis for a new internationalism but this cannot be a restoration of liberal hegemony. It must reckon not only with the damage done by the starkly nationalist “America First” doctrine: it must also acknowledge the failings of liberal internationalism before Trump became president. After all, neoliberal globalisation gave rise to the political and cultural blowback called Trumpism in the US and its ethnonationalist cousins across the world.

Making a fetish of normalcy is a form of American exceptionalism. “America is back” may prove as myopic and delusional as “Make America Great Again”.The Conversation

Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies, University College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article."

 ~~~~~

 

I don't want to be delusional, I want Joe Biden to succeed, but Christ how can it be the Republicans don't even want to impeach Trump, two Q-Anon are members of Congress , what about this BIMBO and one of Trump's judges just gave Biden the shaft ?

 Surprise us all Joe, don't ever stop. Never ever ever stop.

~~~~~

 Stay Safe  and good luck with your vaccine.

   

Joe Biden: "If You Start Me Up, I'll Never Stop " [? !!] - UPDATES 01/27: Biden's Focus Is On Climate Change !

 


Mike took that picture from the park in front of us during a lull in the wild wild storm we just made it through, and talk about wild, that was one for the books.  We lost power only once due to a pole being blown down by the howling winds over on Cantil, the roof is still on, but mucho flooding around us and freezing cold.

Other than that, we have been making plans for several much needed major home improvement projects for the New Year and watching as Joe Biden flips the books on Trump. Due to the increased insecurity here  and an increased schedule of projects, I still have not decided whether or not I will return to instant replays of the drug war in our region.

 Speaking of that subject, two people were executed in their home in neighboring Baja Malibu, and there was more gunfire at SADM close to where Mike took the picture a few nights back. Not just a little, a lot. It's spooky and it is happening up and down the coast. Tijuana is inching up to and may reach 150+ people executed this month.  All of that information, plus national and international events including both AMLO & Carlos Slim coming down with the COVID Virus go here:

 

Zeta Tijuana 

 

You may already be aware that they have opened up vaccines for COVID in San Diego for folks 65 and older. What we found is working for us is going to the Von's pharmacy instead of trying to get through to our primary physicians.  Mike had the first Moderna shot, the second is scheduled in another 28 days; I am on the waiting list.  But, I wish they would hurry up, have been reading that Moderna may have to develop a booster shot due the variants, and I'm not particularly thrilled to be going grocery shopping unprotected without a shot anymore.

 

Joe's On A Roll...

 

 ~ From Politico:

 The First Hundred Days 

 

 
More current:
 
UPDATE / edit 01/27: Adding these on Biden's focus on climate change above and beyond the Paris Accord and the Keystone Pipeline:

 ~ From the New York Times:

 
 
 
 
 ~ From CNN: 

 
 
 
 "President Joe Biden on Wednesday continued his executive action blitz with a package of orders aimed at addressing the climate crisis along with a new memorandum on scientific integrity.  
 
"Today is climate day at the White House, which means that today is jobs day at the White House," Biden told reporters as he sought to tie his environmental push to American job creation.

Here's the executive action Biden took Wednesday and what each item does:

'Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.' This order seeks to cement the climate crisis at the center of US foreign policy and national security. Most notably, it directs the secretary of the interior to pause on entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters.

The order also:

  • Instructs Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to prepare a national intelligence estimate on the security implications of the climate crisis and directs all agencies to develop strategies for integrating climate considerations into their international work.
  • Establishes the National Climate Task Force, assembling leaders from across 21 federal agencies and departments.
  • Commits to environmental justice and new, clean infrastructure projects.
  • Kicks off development of emissions reduction target.
  • Establishes the special presidential envoy for climate on the National Security Council.

'Executive Order on Establishing President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.' This order reestablishes the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Moving forward, the council will advise Biden on policy that affects science, technology, and innovation.

Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity. This memorandum charges the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy with the responsibility of ensuring scientific integrity across federal agencies

Agencies that oversee, direct or fund research are tasked with designating a senior agency employee as chief science officer to ensure agency research programs are scientifically and technologically well founded.

Is this Biden's first action on the climate crisis?

No. On his first day in office, Biden signed executive actions to rejoin the Paris climate accord and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.

He also directed agencies to review and reverse more than 100 Trump administration actions on the environment.

What's next for Biden's climate agenda?

Biden also announced Wednesday that he would be calling on Congress in the coming days to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels.

"Unlike previous administrations I don't think the federal government should give handouts to big oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies," he told reporters.

Biden will additionally host a Leaders' Climate Summit on Earth Day, April 22, and the US will reconvene the Major Economies Forum.

What executive action is expected tomorrow?

Health care is set be the the theme on Thursday with Biden planning to rescind the Mexico City Policy and review the Title X rule on abortion referrals. There may also be an executive action on Medicaid, as well as the initiation of open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act."

 

 ~  From Informed Comment:

Biden to Have Feds Buy 650K Electric Vehicles, Promising Rapid Fall In EV Prices 

 

 

 "Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden plans to create a million auto-worker jobs by replacing the enormous fleet of some 650,000 vehicles owned by the federal government with electric cars. He specified EVs that emit no carbon dioxide, which suggests he wants the government to buy pure EVs like General Motors’ Chevy Bolt or the Tesla 3. So reports Kate Duffy at Business Insider. Biden called it the biggest government infrastructure procurement program since WW II.

In the United States, 650,000 EVs is a lot. Sales of all kinds of EVs (hybrids, plug-in hybrids and pure electric) in the U.S. were expected to reach 1.6 million in 2020.

Biden’s step is important because of Wright’s Law.” Aeronautical engineer Theodore P. Wright posited in 1936 that “for every doubling of airplane production the labor requirement was reduced by 10-15%.” The falling labor requirement means falling production costs.

So Biden’s big buy, along with an expected huge ramp-up of EV sales to private consumers this year and next, will likely lead to a significant cost reduction for electric vehicles. GM already has made a battery breakthrough that should allow it to sell EVs more cheaply by 2025 and possibly by 2023 than gasoline automobiles.

Biden pledges to put $5 billion into research and development in bringing down battery costs, which could also impel an explosion of electric car buying. He will also restore tax breaks for EV buyers and will award new tax credits to Tesla and GM. Further, he wants to put a network of thousands of fast-charging stations around the country. Some states, like California, have similar plans, so that the federal and the state programs could complement and accelerate one another.

A lot more EVs could have been sold in the US in 2020 if more had been available. But never fear. Rolling Stone’s Jesse Will previews 12 new EV models coming this year, and some predict nearly twice that many.

Some analysts suggest that electric cars are not as green as they seem, because they use electricity from the grid, and the grid is sometimes dirty, using e.g. coal. But EVs run cleaner than gasoline cars even in heavy coal states like Pennsylvania, studies have shown. Further, some EV owners have solar panels on their roofs, and don’t depend on the grid. And another thing. Coal plants are closing like crazy and over the life of an EV the owner can expect it to burn cleaner and cleaner (not true of a gasoline vehicle). In my own Michigan, the proportion of our electricity from coal has halved from 65% in 2010 to some 35% today. (And, I have solar panels anyway). As for the carbon used to make EVs, that is becoming cleaner too, with the advent of e.g. green steel.

Biden wants the EVs bought by the government to be made mostly in the U.S., not just 50%. It seems to me that the big beneficiaries of that policy would be GM, with its Chevy Bolt, Ford, and Tesla. Ford’s big entry is an electric Mustang. Wouldn’t it be a lucky USPS delivery guy that gets to drive one of those!"

—–

Bonus Video:

Bloomberg: Biden’s EV speech"

 

Well, this is rocking my world...keep at it Joe ! 😎

 

 

end edit.

 

~~~~~ 


 
 
 ~ From NBC:
 
 
/ Source: Associated Press
 
 
 
 
PBS:
 

 

 

~~~~~

 

Most important, keep an eye on:

 

Democracy Now ! 

 

Democracy Now|Immigration 

 

And remember,  most Republicans are against Impeaching Trump.  Here's a good one:

 

 ~ From Informed Comment :

 Did America Really Duck The Dark Night of Fascism ? the Delusion of Normalcy That Haunts The United States 

 

 

 

"The election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States was received across much of the world with a mixture of relief and exuberance, though often laced with apprehension. A common theme in news headlines and Twitter feeds was that normal service was being resumed in the US and in international affairs.

In France, the newspaper Le Monde ran with the headline: “American Elections 2020: Joe Biden’s victory sparks huge relief in Europe.” On Twitter, Paris’ mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted out: “Welcome Back, America.” In Germany, the cover of the news magazine Der Spiegel depicted Biden putting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty back on the torso (referencing an infamous cover from 2017 that depicted Trump severing the head). The image is accompanied with the ironic text “Make America Great Again.”

The theme of an American restoration was repeated in news and social media across the world. The symbolism is strong, but it is less clear what is being restored. In this it echoes the “return to normalcy” theme in Biden’s election campaign in the US, a nostalgic nostrum that vaguely promises a reset of American principles and policies. What is at issue in these desires to go back to a pre-Trump America?

In the US, the desire for normalcy surrounding the election of Biden reflects an existential anxiety – that Trump ignited a devastating attack on liberal democracy that may prove epochal.

The contradictions and tensions in American liberal democracy have been forcefully revealed with his presidency, which took advantage of the gap between declared liberal values and political reality. Trump not only exploited that gap, he spoke to latent desires and emboldened expressions of identity in both politics and people that had long been marginalised or silenced.

With Trump’s ousting, the liberal desire for a return to normality has been amped up via the figure of Joe Biden. It was clearly articulated by the new president at his inauguration, in his pleas for national unity and his promise to end the “uncivil war” in the US. David Sanger, in the New York Times, noted that: “Mr Biden’s inauguration was notable for its normalcy, the sense of relief that permeated the capital over an era of constant turmoil and falsehood ending.”

But there was little that was normal in the scene of a scaled-down inauguration taking place with only a handful of socially distant, masked participants and surrounded by the militarised landscape of a post-riot Capitol. The image was not of national healing but of a national emergency.

Accompanying the desire for normalcy and sense of relief is the implication that the “Trump era” was an aberration, a temporary deviation in the natural political order of things.

This is an attractive and tempting palliative for those who resisted Trump’s spell and disavow the significance of his political rise and appeal to millions of Americans. In this view, Trump was “the cat in the hat” – an unwelcome visitor and unruly avatar of instincts for disorder, evicted once the parents return. Enter Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

But Trump (and Trumpism) was and is something more than a temporary eruption in the order of things or mere symptom of a malaise in American public life. Trump unleashed the libidinal forces of “illiberal democracy”, undermining America’s commitment to constitutionalism, the rule of law and individual rights. He supported these forces in the US and encouraged them elsewhere, transforming the landscapes of American political culture and foreign affairs in ways we are still trying to understand.

American myopia

Americans pay little heed to external perspectives on their country and by and large do not respond well to critical views of it or of their leaders. That may be viewed as stubbornly patriotic, but it is more fundamentally due to a deep-seated ignorance founded on a myth of national exceptionalism, a myopia that is quintessentially American.

Trump’s presidency should remind Americans of the fragility of the social and political order that so many take for granted. Is it not a little shocking that Americans should need to be reminded of this? Perhaps not, perhaps the amnesia is a component of the American worldview, which commonly displaces the most serious challenges to democracy on to others elsewhere.

As the American writer Tom Wolfe once quipped, the “dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Of course, “it can’t happen here”.

Might it be that the importance of Trump’s election and presidency has been better or at least more readily understood in other countries where there is a living memory of the pains of populist authoritarianism, where people are more familiar with how reality can be dismantled?

The Slovenian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon suggests as much when, in the wake of Trump’s election, he commented:

In America, a comfortable entitlement blunts and deactivates imagination – it is hard to imagine that this American life is not the only life possible, that there could be any reason to undo it.

Hemon filters his perspective through his experiences and insights from living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war “through a time when what cannot possibly happen begins to happen, rapidly and everywhere”. Observing the disorienting impact of the early days of Trump’s presidency, he wryly notes that: “‘Reality’ has finally earned its quotation marks.”

Reality did indeed earn its quotation marks in “Trump’s America”, a fantasy world in which Trump supporters imaginatively and emotionally invest. It’s a world in which conspiracy theory and social media combine to create an alternative reality, a world that is self-contained and self-reinforcing – and impervious to facts.

Galvanised by Trump’s near messianic leadership, the fantasy has become pervasive and is deeply embedded in the imaginations – the fears and desires – of millions of Americans. It cannot simply or swiftly be undone.

Back to reality

“America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it”, Biden stated in November as he introduced his foreign policy team. The “America is back” refrain has been repeated ad nauseum by Biden’s surrogates in the past few months.

What it means in terms of policy remains unclear. More symbolically, it is declared as a rebuttal of Trumpist foreign policy, infamously sloganed as “America First”, suggesting a renewed era of US global engagement and leadership. But the meaning remains open and opaque and, as Julian Borger observes in The Guardian: “How a slogan as all-encompassing as ‘America is Back’ is received around the world will inevitably be a Rorschach test for what is perceived to be the ‘real America’ that has been absent in the past four years.”

The perception of what constitutes the “real America” is both a domestic and foreign policy dilemma for the US. Assumptions about liberal democracy at home and about a liberal world order abroad are no longer acts of faith.

As we head into a “post-American world”, global enthusiasm for democracy cannot be assumed, nor can the ability of the US to set an example, for that has been undone by the spectacles of civil unrest and the disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The domestic “uncivil war” will, as political scientist Francis Fukuyama warns, have “consequences for global democracy in the coming years”.

Biden’s foreign policy team are talking up democratic solidarity between states as the basis for a new internationalism but this cannot be a restoration of liberal hegemony. It must reckon not only with the damage done by the starkly nationalist “America First” doctrine: it must also acknowledge the failings of liberal internationalism before Trump became president. After all, neoliberal globalisation gave rise to the political and cultural blowback called Trumpism in the US and its ethnonationalist cousins across the world.

Making a fetish of normalcy is a form of American exceptionalism. “America is back” may prove as myopic and delusional as “Make America Great Again”.The Conversation

Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies, University College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article."

 ~~~~~

 

I don't want to be delusional, I want Joe Biden to succeed, but Christ how can it be the Republicans don't even want to impeach Trump, two Q-Anon are members of Congress , what about this BIMBO and one of Trump's judges just gave Biden the shaft ?

 Surprise us all Joe, don't ever stop. Never ever ever stop.

~~~~~

 Stay Safe  and good luck with your vaccine.