Confronting Disaster on the Home Front—An Analysis (13 July 2024) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I — A Political Gordian Knot
There can be no denying that the U.S. is in trouble. The political party system has tied the country into a sort of Gordian knot. It has done so by allowing two aged men, both deeply flawed in their own ways, to command the two dominant political parties. In an election year that is bound to cause a disruptive outcome and widespread disillusionment.
One end of this Gordian knot is held by Donald Trump. Trump may well be a psychotic narcissist and will try to operate outside the law and the constitution. In his first time in office one could see intimations of this, and the impression he is now giving is that he will try harder to be a real fascist if given a second chance. The other end of this knot is held by Joe Biden. Biden has been a relatively good president on the U.S. domestic side of things. He is not at all the strutting Mussolini type that Trump tries to be. But Biden does have a couple of serious flaws. First of all, he is at least as addled, in his specific way, as is Trump. Second, he is stuck in a Cold War mindset, as can be seen in his stubborn support of an uncompromising Ukrainian government, and third, he is a mass murderer—in the legal, very real sense that he is aiding and abetting Israel (apparently Biden’s emotional home away from home) to genocidally murder its Palestinian population.
Part II — What To Do?
So what is a U.S. voter supposed to do come this November’s election? Most of the nation’s mainstream media “Opinion” writers, aka “influencers,” think they know. They tell us that the only sensible thing to do is vote for Biden. And, in making their argument, they castigate those who disagree, particularly those who protest Biden’s loyalty to the Zionists (Israel). Here is an example of what can be judged a mainstream position:
Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist specializing in national politics. On 3 May 2024, he wrote a column entitled “To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest.” In summary, he castigates the protestors for not understanding that loudly accusing Biden of complicity in mass murder only helps elect the would-be fascist Donald Trump. He asks why the protesters cannot see that Trump is pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian too, that he has described them (the protesters) as “paid agitators” and “brainwashed Hamas sympathizers”? Milbank does say that the protesters’ frustration with the president’s support for Israel is understandable. “But in making Biden the enemy, including with chants of ‘Genocide Joe,’ the plans to trash the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the proliferation of vows of the “uncommitted” never to vote for Biden, they are in effect working to elect Trump. That is not principled protest; it’s nihilism.”
Part III — What Milbank Does Not Understand
A lot of what Milbank says about Trump is true. As one side of the Gordian knot, he is very dangerous. And, certainly, he is no friend of the Palestinians. However, Trump does not stand alone on this point. What Joe Biden represents, at least in terms of the recent history of American foreign policy, is just as dangerous—particularly to the global south. His policy in support of Israel is one directly in line with a broader American history of economic and military domination. The millions of dead and maimed scattered throughout the Middle East (to which we can now add at least 40,000 Palestinians), Latin America, Asia and North Africa are due, in part, to the policy decisions of past presidents, many of them Democrats. None of this provides us with any good reason to vote for Biden. Milbank might not understand this half of the tragedy, but the protesters seem to. What else does Milbank and those in his cohort fail to understand?
Well, there is the moral revulsion of Arab Americans, particularly, but certainly not only, those who are of Palestinian heritage. For these folks, voting for Biden would be like voting for someone who helped kill your family and then dismissed their deaths (and your ancestral legacy) as unimportant to the United States. Supporting Biden under these circumstances is an utterly unreasonable expectation, as is the suggestion that they remain silent about what the Democratic president has wrought. And then, existing side by side with Arab American disgust, is the moral revulsion of anti-Zionist American Jews, many but not all of whom are young, over what is being done “in their name”—done hand and glove by Biden and his idealized, sanguinary Zionists. Does Milbank take this anger and sorrow seriously (you can be sure the guy in the White House doesn’t)? Does he understand that what we are dealing with here is a level of emotion that Democratic political calculation to get Biden reelected cannot overcome? That is a real part of the dilemma, the Gordian knot, that we have tied ourselves into.
Part IV — An Alternative Suggestion
Given the nature of the problem, America’s mainstream pro-Biden influencers are probably addressing the wrong audience when castigating protesters. The emotions and anger of the demonstrators are actually ones worth having. They reference ideals the nation should strive for—you know, things like upholding international law, the right of national self-determination, equality among diverse populations (being against Apartheid), saving an ancient religion, Judaism, from being taken over by a racist political heresy. Why would Milbank and his cohort want to undermine these goals? Here is an alternative suggestion.
If these influencers really want to prevent Trump getting a second chance to be a fascist leader, they should address elements of his main audience. I am referring to the millions of Christian fundamentalist voters in the United States who will vote for Trump under the delusion that God wants them to do so.
Now this is going to sound far-fetched, but stay with me for a while. Milbank and his fellows should start a whisper campaign that the devil has caused them all (the fundamentalists) to see Trump as an agent of God. After all, if they were doing anything other than “napping over the past eight years” (that is what Milbank accuses the protesters of doing) they should be vulnerable to the suggestion that a vote for a congenital liar like Donald Trump is really a vote for an agent of “The Father of All Lies” (a Mormon reference to the devil). Really, suggestions of misinterpretation have caused real confusion among Christian true believers in the past (for instance, the contest between transubstantiation and consubstantiation during the Reformation). It seems to me that such a whisper campaign is a more worthwhile effort than telling an American Arab or Jewish protester to put aside the images of genocidal carnage for the sake of Biden’s reelection.
Part V — Continued Struggle
Either way the election goes, there will have to be continued struggle. If Joe Biden does run and does win, we are still in trouble. There will be no resolution to the war in Ukraine or Gaza. Protests against Zionist apartheid will continue on campuses in Fall, fostering yet more police repression. On college campuses free speech and expression will continue to be replaced by donor dictates to submissive administrators. This means that the standards of education, already taking a hit from closed-minded governors at the high school level, will suffer at the level of higher education. No doubt this will happen under Trump as well (in addition to a myriad number of environmental and economic threats of great importance). On the issues of free speech and educational integrity, to say nothing of carte blanche for the mad men leading Israel down the tubes, we are facing a fiasco either way.
Politics is supposed to operate within a context of the rule of law. In a democracy it is supposed to be a rational process seeking the common good. In the U.S. it has become an arena for the battle of single-issue lobbies who represent citizens who don’t care about the common good. It has become a field of play of men and women with oversized egos who think they are above the law. Certainly that is the case of both Trump and Biden. And, while the Republican Party is in shambles, having been reduced to a cult, the Democratic Party shows signs of a dangerous ossification—that will be the case if they can’t replace Biden with a much better candidate and maybe break through that Gordian knot.
So here is the choice as of this moment: a strutting Mussolini want-to-be, or a guy who mistakes resistance to oppression as “sheer evil.” Either way, what we are facing is disaster on the home front.
