All the post-debate talk about whether Biden has what it takes to be president — when he already is — suggests people know he’s not in charge.
Donald Trump – Joe Biden CNN debate on Thursday. (C-Span still)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
It’s very revealing how everybody’s focusing on what Joe Biden’s dementia-addled debate performance says about his ability to win re-election instead of on the fact that the current, sitting president of the United States has dementia.
If you were lucky enough to have missed the debate, Biden was so confused and zoned out that not only did CNN’s audience overwhelmingly say former U.S. President Donald Trump won while the word “dementia” was sent trending on Twitter, but it was also uniformly acknowledged to have been a horrifying catastrophe by Democratic Party operatives and liberal media pundits, who are now widely suggesting that the president should withdraw from the race.
But the conversation has almost entirely revolved around Biden as a presidential candidate, with relatively little attention going to the fact that this person is the president right now. Everyone’s talking about whether Biden can assure American voters that he has what it takes to be president, and nobody seems all that concerned about the fact that he is already president and will remain so for half a year.
What this suggests is that people already kind of know on some level that the president of the United States doesn’t really run the United States, but are still mentally compartmentalized away from this reality enough to care who wins the presidential election.
If people really believed the president runs the country, they’d be freaking out that Biden in his demented haze might order an attack on what he may think is still the Soviet Union or nuke Libya to kill Muammar Gaddafi or something.
They’re not worried that this will happen because they know their government is actually being run by unelected empire managers from behind the scenes, and that Biden is just the official face on the operation.
So in order to hold their mainstream worldview together, liberals are simultaneously straddling the two completely contradictory concepts that (A) it doesn’t matter who the president is because the country is actually run by unelected empire managers, and (B) that Biden’s debate performance was very concerning because it means Trump will become president.
If they let go of (A) then they’re no longer in the mainstream worldview where their country works how they were taught it works in school, and if they let go of (B) then they’re no longer in the mainstream worldview where presidential elections are super duper important and all their country’s problems are the result of Americans voting incorrectly.
They straddle both and try not to think too hard about the obvious contradictions between them, in order to avoid the crushing cognitive dissonance they’d experience if they looked at them too closely.
The entire CNN post-debate panel is talking about how incoherent Biden was. And they legitimately seemed shocked. Incredible stuff. It’s fascinating what it takes for liberals to catch onto something people have been talking about for 4 years now.
— keyvan (@still_oppressed) June 28, 2024
In reality the U.S. empire has marched along in all its usual depravity despite its official leader having Swiss cheese for a brain this entire time.
They got their genocide in Gaza and their world-threatening proxy war against Russia, as well as a China policy that is vastly more hawkish than that of Biden’s predecessors.
The imperial murder machine hasn’t skipped a beat in its nonstop campaign of steadily increasing global tyranny.
This has happened because U.S. presidential elections are fake and the results don’t matter.
It wouldn’t matter if Americans elected a labrador retriever or a bottle of Tabasco sauce; the empire would roll forward without the slightest interruption.
The wars would continue. The economic injustice would continue. The surging authoritarianism would continue. The oligarchy and corruption would continue. The ecocidal capitalism would continue. The imperialist extraction would continue.
U.S. elections are just a diversion to keep Americans from pushing for real change in ways that pose a meaningful challenge to power, and Americans already kind of know this.
The sooner they stop compartmentalizing away from this fact that they’re already dimly aware of and face reality, the sooner they can start bringing health to both their nation and the world.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I really had hoped to see the Biden that delivered the state of the union address. We didn’t get that.
The Presidents are front-men for the party’s aparatchiks–either party’s. Neither Trump nor Biden has much talent or inspiration –that seems clear. This is especially true now: Trump is a fraudulent, sociopathic poseur & Biden would seem to be headlong into a bit of dementia. Sad for us all.
Pre-Presidential election debates are normally held in September. So why was the Biden-Trump debate held so early this June, a backflip after the Establishment originally declared there would be no debate at all? The Demoncrats finally accepted that Biden’s dementia could no longer be covered up, so best to publicly demonstrate it, then mount a mainstream media campaign to eject the babbling cadaver who had refused to leave voluntarily. Do it early to find a replacement.
However the issue is not whether a braindead corpse is worse than a narcissistic conman. The issue is that the entire US political system is completely rotten and corrupted by big money and the MIC, who are railroading everybody towards WW3.
To paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, our choices are either ecosocialism or barbarism. Short of Dr Jill Stein being elected, only popular revolution can bring about ecosocialist reform, which will not be complete until the last private banker is strangled by the entrails of the last Raytheon executive.
Here is the instruction manual on how to do it: hxxps://www.dropbox.com/s/nio185d72vkqkpc/ChannellingTrout_full_compressed.pdf?dl=1
I vote for the bottle of Tabasco sauce!
Seriously, Caitlin, you are absolutely right.
We are screwed no matter how you look at it!
Bido slides into the ol’ soft shoe while the gaggle babbles the ol’ soft coup.
No, it does make a difference who you vote for. The Democratic Party maintains a bit of socialism and concern for the environment; the Republicans have long been dead set on destroying any implementation of these concerns. If you succumb to demoralizing rhetoric like this and don’t vote then you might change the balance of power and threaten what basically maintains civilization.
Yes, the elected government is clipped to only having willful influence within a restricted realm, but that realm is still very important.
Maybe you could make some suggestions as to what a meaningful challenge to power looks like.
I can’t speak for Tabasco sauce fans, but as a past owner of two labrador retrievers I take extreme offense to the Biden comparison. I demand a retraction.
We have lamely given ourselves over to being in an AI guided self-driven vehicle.
Whoever believes that the President runs the ‘show’ is as gullible as any audience must be to believe the storyline being performed!
A President is not the writer of the script, he is the actor purported to be the faithful interpreter, to the best of his ability, of the play writers’ original creative ideas.
When last did this American ‘show’ deserve a universal standing ovation?
Yes, the zombie apocalypse is upon us. Corporations are immortal zombie vampires. They cannot be killed, and they suck our blood until we die. They are both fast zombies and slow zombies: when a crisis erupts, they are so quick to take advantage we can’t even see that they’ve moved until the rubble clears and the ashes blow away. But they are also so slow, that they can hold out for an entire generation of people to die to strengthen their position.
So. How do we defeat zombie vampires? Not by silver, not by fire. It looks like they’ll eat the whole world and then die under the weight of their own excrement, with the rest of the planet. Anyone have a better plan?
Forty years ago, the nation was pretending that Reagan was serving as President – though he was worse off than Biden is.by far. Historians claim that he was a great President [because he did not get in the way of the real Powers who ran things. When Carter was elected, he actually took charge of affairs and was universally hated by the Establishment.
You do know that Carter preceded Reagan, right? He took charge of affairs all right, funding and arming the Taliban because Brzezinski told him to.
We have already crossed that bridge with Reagan a long time ago. The only purpose of Presidents is to get elected. Often after they are elected with a few months they totally go away one way or another. Sometimes a VP goes away first like Agnew and then shortly thereafter the President resigns but prior attention was made that if a Speaker of the House become President without a VP he gets to appoint one. Unfortunately Ford chose Kissinger close friend Nelson Rockefeller over GWHB. It was later rectified when Bill Casey helped Reagan to primary victory over GWHB all over again Bush gets the VP spot. Things may have been ugly between 3 CIA factions but whew it got settled .They we could get back to focusing on drug lords as freedom fighters with sales rights.
There are some other funny happenings in previous centuries like Lincolns body supposedly stolen and found and then put under deep concrete like JFK and J Edgar. Maybe there is something suspicious with US body counts.
The only astonishing thing about the reaction of the MSM and the punditocracy to President Biden’s debate performance is the fact that they seem to be shocked by it. Far, far worse displays of Biden’s cognitive decline have appeared on TikTok for the past three and a half years, which no doubt partly explains why the political class and the mainstream media have joined in the effort to deny the American public the ability to access TikTok.
My 96 year old mother, the daughter of a logger and rural high school grad, has figured out how all of this works. What she calls “the enemy of the month,” the latest distraction we’re supposed to fear intensely. Therefore to support decisions to send in the U.S. military (read: colonialist invasion) to bring them “democracy.” Which, my mom points out, if the 1%ers were serious about, we’d have real candidates for President and not addled, mediocre puppets or incompetent, wealthy narcissists. We’d also be having real debates about a trickle-up econ system destroying the planet because it considers human and natural resources as things to be used up for the benefit of the few. To the elites, as blue collar worker for 28 years, I’m a 76 year old invisible, unimportant nobody. Yet despite senses diminished by age, I see clearly what has happened. I concur with my mom.
You and your mom sound super cool! I’m 70 years old, also an unimportant nobody, of which I am proud. But you know what age gives us as our senses dull? (I’ve been half-blind all my life and my hearing is better than ever.) We SEE better than we ever did, we HEAR better than we ever did, and this is the gift of wisdom, something few people gain because they enjoy being lied to and lying to themselves. Best wishes!
Spot on. At heart, this is the “red pill/blue pill” dilemma for each person and American society.
The title of this article “We finally beat Medicare” was a slip of the tongue by a worried senior trying to say “we finally beat the forces overcharging for insulin”
A perfect example of how Trump lies was when he said that the Charlottesville Nazis were fine people and then tried to deny it and say that he didn’t say it and that it had been ‘debunked’. We all heard him say it on TV! Just hilarious; I got a big laugh out of that. Poor Trump looked insane with a new face contortion every ten seconds and his eyes darting around like a trapped rat looking for a way out. Biden looked more composed than that even with his senior moments. I think Biden is paranoid of what people will say about his senior moments and that makes it worse, much like when a stutterer is under pressure. Trump was his typical stream of consciousness sixth grade bully, but the Trumpies won’t care. Like vampires who need blood they will still worship at the feet of their god.
I figured out what is wrong with America….we are entertainment starved.
Biden will look “more composed than ever” when he is in his coffin. He’s half-dead now and I don’t equate that with composure!
Last night revealed not that the Emperor has no clothes, but that the EMPIRE has no clothes.
You’re absolutely correct, Caitlin! I have nothing nice to say about Biden, whose career in politics I’ve watched for almost 40 years or so, nor do I care for Trump either, and wouldn’t vote for either of them, as they both have sold out to the Deep State or secretive government operatives running Imperial America.
Besides Trump having no class or even a modicum of protocol, his evasive answers last night and the constant belittlement of Biden was hard to watch.
As a free thinker, I’ll be voting for Dr. Jill Stein for the third time, rather than having to choose between the R or the D.
Not a wasted vote, as I’ve been told. Hey, when I left the DemoRAT Party and voted for Nader in 2000, I was told it was a vote for the former coward-in-chief, (G W. B) and I said, “NO, it was a vote for Ralph Nader?” I hear the same lament every four years for the past 24 years.
I live in California, and it doesn’t matter whom I vote for. The election is over before my vote is counted.
Blaming and haranguing the voter for their choice instead of the parties who represent no choice is just more divide and conquer bs, distraction from the real bast*rds who are in charge (I mean no disrespect for those born of unmarried parents).
I find it unacceptable to disqualify a presidential candidate from the electoral race solely based on his age and few missteps, especially when the president is nearing the end of his term.
Taking action to remove him at this juncture would display a severe lack of empathy and respect towards an individual who has dutifully served in “his own manner” and capacity, while also coping with recent family challenges.
Any contemplation of such a measure by supporters of the Democratic Party would likely face vehement opposition from voters aged over 60 and under 25, with the latter demographic often more aligned with humanitarian values (as seen in the Gaza situation).
Merely insinuating that these advocates would move forward with the idea of replacing Biden, due to a few misjudgments and weary appearance, exposes a chilling absence of humanity and empathy among them, solidifying suspicions that beneath their progressive facade reside individuals devoid of compassion and sensitivity.
As She said is not about the candidates, is about the house of cards they are competing for.
He isn’t just a ‘potential’ candidate, he is the sitting president with his finger on the nuclear button! He is also senile, demented and delusional – visibly so, as he just demonstrated for an hour and a half to the world.
That in itself is the best possible reason for getting rid of him now – he is not fit for the job, and poses a huge risk to the world if he loses the plot and starts a nuclear war, even though I’d hope that his minders would stop him. But what if they don’t or can’t?
No, he is far too big a risk to leave in place on ‘compassionate’ grounds!
As a 70-year-old I find your comment deeply offensive. Biden has been a horror show his entire life; racist, misogynist, warmongering, willing to do anything for a buck. I felt a bit of sympathy for him as he obviously has NO ONE who gives a damn about him because if anyone did give a damn about him they would put him in a nursing facility and not continually parade him in front of the public. Of course, my guess is that the staff in a facility would insist on drugging him because the likelihood that he would be a belligerent patient is very high.
So so much for your voters over 60 comment. Plenty of us old people have brains and hearts, two organs Biden has never used.
“It wouldn’t matter if Americans elected a labrador retriever or a bottle of Tabasco sauce; the empire would roll forward without the slightest interruption.
The wars would continue. The economic injustice would continue. The surging authoritarianism would continue. The oligarchy and corruption would continue. The ecocidal capitalism would continue. The imperialist extraction would continue.”
But the press conferences, in either case, would vastly improved. In fact, I’m certain the Tabasco sauce would handle the next cold virus pandemic with relative ease.
Dear Caitlin, suggesting Americans start bringing health to both their nation and the world, are you really that naive. That is never ever going to happen, cause as you should know the ever silent American majority population are dumbed down zombies whose only concern turns around where the necessary dollars for daily survival may come from, incapable of changing the ways of their nation and the world the slightest bit. The Deep State is free to do whatever suits US capitalists in their ruthless plundering of the planet. I dare not predict in advance but do believe future is looking so bright that best thing we can do for ourselves is wear shades.
I keep thinking about the 20 million people the U.S. has killed since WWII with its coups, wars, proxy wars, and sanctions and no one ever being held to account. So they just keep doing it, causing suffering and creating havoc everywhere they touch. The U.S. public is so busy watching TV shows and shopping, don’t ask them to know anything or do anything about it. Now we are on the verge of nuclear war, and 90% of the U.S. population doesn’t even know about it.
I get that no one wants to die in the street fighting the power. I sure don’t. But if everyone is in the street, the chance of some lunatic cop shooting you or me is small enough even for me to put my body in the throng. There is only one way to end the crimes of the U.S. oligarchy, and that is for everyone who is not one of them to demand it.
Yes, Bill, nothing will change until (and if) masses of people say enough is enough.
Tragic but true. I live in Canada and I’m very distressed about what is happening in the US as we have a front row seat on the action. I’m even more distressed that my government is so blind to all of this and doesn’t see the continual decline of democracy in the US as threat to our national security. Europeans are even more stupid as the NATO countries there continue to support the US in its proxy war with Russia to the clear and obvious detriment to their own economies. Crazy times we are living in.
I agree with Caitlin’s claim that the foreign policy establishment are not troubled by Biden’s evident incapacity as they merrily run the show with only an occasional, patronizing, glance at the “commander-in-chief.” It does not follow from this that they are indifferent to the matter of who is president. A strong-willed loose cannon like Trump threatens the comfortable, business-as-usual atmosphere that has prevailed since Biden’s election. I doubt the establishment seriously fears that Trump will significantly redirect US behaviour. I suspect, though, that are bothered as they think of all the effort they will need to expend keep the ship of state moving in its current, disastrous trajectory.
Outstanding. Pleasing. Eloquent. Powerful. Well spoken.
I was going to vote for a watermelon.
But I’ll write in my Lab Henry now.
Maybe he can help the National Security State technocrats with their decision making.
He’s actually trained me to fetch.
After seeing msnbc pundits bemoaning Joes performance, I found the video. I was expecting much worse. I felt he was coherent the majority of the time but displayed no vitality. Biden has always struggled at times speaking, going way back. I’m surprised liberal pundits through under the bus so quickly and completely unless they have other plans.
It’s been made quite clear they have other plans. Considering the control the political class has over what the corporate media reports, the group think displayed post debate about Biden’s performance can only mean the plan to replace him was in the works for a while.
I think springing Julian Assange right before this farce of a debate was to get THAT attack on the truth out of the news cycle. Like Ms Johnstone wrote, we all know the president isn’t really in charge of much except optics. I find it fascinating all the attacks on Trump lying so much. WTH? Isn’t that a job requirement?