The party’s willingness to let Biden run again is all too suggestive of what dangers and disorders may come between now and Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
President Joe Biden holding a cabinet meeting in June. (White House, Adam Schultz)
By Patrick Lawrence
Original to ScheerPost
At writing, we are 16 months from the 2024 presidential election. If a week is a long time in politics, there is too strong a chance that the interim upon us will prove one of awful eventfulness. In my read, the risk of brazen lawlessness in the upper reaches of power and, in consequence, a constitutional crisis, is now greater than at any point in the postwar period. It is time to brace ourselves against this eventuality.
Is there any other plausible conclusion as things now stand? I do not see one. Two reasons:
One, the Democrats have emerged since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 as a party of liberal authoritarians intent on imposing their political hegemony on our republic by whatever means this project requires. Nothing is out of bounds, as these people have already demonstrated.
Two, in what looks like one of the great political miscalculations in my lifetime, the Democrats are determined to stand a candidate in 2024 whose senility has been publicly on display for the past two years and change.
This is a combustible pair of realities. The second of these, President Joe Biden’s failing mental condition, makes the first of these, the culture of authoritarian righteousness in the Democratic mainstream, very perilous. The party hierarchy has already declared Biden will not face any challenger in a primary debate — an openly antidemocratic regression without precedent since televised debates became essential to the political process during the Kennedy–Nixon contest in 1960.
What else will come in this line, we have to ask. In my judgment, the Democrats’ willingness to let Biden run again is all too suggestive of what dangers and disorders may come between now and Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. They appear determined, one way or another, to keep this man in the White House. This is not a thought with which one rests easily.
Things have gone very poorly for Joe Biden since he moved into the White House two and a half years ago. Yes, he continues to hide behind that carnival barker’s smile he plastered on as political equipment 50–odd years ago. But if the president and all the president’s men and women are not in the way of desperate at this point, they are in the way of insentient. In his Substack newsletter a few weeks ago, Seymour Hersh quoted one of his inside sources saying the administration is a behind-closed-doors madhouse. I see no reason to doubt this.
Let’s briefly run down the list.
Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 20 in Kiev. (White House/Adam Schultz)
Biden, who carried the Ukraine portfolio during his years as Barack Obama’s vice-president, went to work provoking a war between Ukraine and Russia — a proxy war, of course — as soon as he took office. Better put, he escalated his previous efforts in this line once he won the White House. Here is John Mearsheimer, the prominent foreign relations scholar, on this point during an interview The Grayzone published Sunday:
“I think it was stupidity. I think you can’t underestimate just how foolish the West is when it comes to the whole question of Ukraine — and all sorts of other issues as well. But I think that the West believed — and here we’re talking mainly about the United States — that if a war did break out between Ukraine and Russia, that the West plus Ukraine would prevail, that the Russians would be defeated. I believe we thought that was the case.”
It is now clear that the Ukraine project, the centerpiece of a president who has long traveled on the myth of his foreign policy expertise, is a flop. There will be no Russian withdrawal or defeat, and the Kiev regime is exposed as a right-wing gathering of compulsive crooks. Along with this goes Biden’s cosmic democrats-vs-authoritarians proposal to organize the 21st century: Nobody beyond the West and its appendages wants anything to do with it. Americans, let’s note immediately, are paying dearly for these escapades — in out-of-pocket expenses as well as in lost opportunity, a larger category of costs, and they appear at last to be figuring this out.
On the domestic side it is one bit of tomfoolery after another with these people. We are now treated to the notion of “Bidenomics.” Not even Biden knows what Bidenomics is supposed to be about. It comes to little more than citations of job numbers that do not mean much unless wage numbers are also considered, and wage numbers are left out of the Bidenomics equation. Remember Build Back Better? Oh, come on, you must, distant as the memory is at this point.
Biden delivering remarks on his Build Back Better agenda in October 2021 at the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (White House, Adam Schultz)
There is the censorship case, in which the Biden regime is charged with First Amendment violations for colluding with Silicon Valley to suppress dissenting opinion. As widely reported, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden regime and numerous of its operatives several weeks ago. In doing so he suggested clearly that the final judgment, now pending, is likely to go to the plaintiffs, the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana as well as five private citizens.
[Related: US Court Victory Against Online Censorship]
The Hunter Biden affair, growing like a grotesque weed as we speak, could now prove to be Biden’s greatest vulnerability — and so the Democratic Party’s.
The House Oversight Committee is looking at documents directly implicating the president in bribery schemes that brought the Biden family $17 million during Joe’s time as Obama’s veep. A federal judge in Delaware has thrown back Hunter’s disgraceful plea bargain, rejecting the preposterous provision that the president’s son be immune from all future findings of corruption. “The blanket shield against any other charges based on past misconduct was so inappropriate,” Michael Goodwin wrote in the New York Post last weekend, “that the only possible explanation is that the aim was to shut down the probe of the family permanently.”
Hunter Biden, at right, as his father took the oath of office, Jan. 20, 2021. (White House, Chuck Kennedy)
No, they are not insentient. They are desperate.
There are, finally, the Biden Justice Department under Merrick Garland and the FBI under Christopher Wray. The latter, continuing the practice during the Russiagate years, has, open and shut, turned the agency into a politicized instrument at the Democratic Party’s disposal, most recently by withholding for several years documents exposing Joe Biden’s direct involvement in Hunter’s influence-peddling schemes. Anyone who does not recognize the political motives of Garland’s campaign to get Donald Trump jailed and, on the other side, his direction of the Hunter Biden plea deal, is reading too many Gail Collins columns.
Look at this mess. A senile president — the physicians call Biden’s condition “neurocognitive disorder,” but “senile” or “demented” is what they mean — is standing for reelection with a wasteful proxy war failing, nothing much to show for himself at home, mounting evidence of epic-scale personal corruption, institutional failure of the same magnitude. There is only one way to explain this shambles: Every one of these crises traces back to the Democratic Party’s obsession with taking and holding power more or less indefinitely to suit its hubristic, end-of-history “narrative” of righteous liberal triumph.
I do not approve of columnists who self-reference, but I will breach my own rule on this occasion.
I warned when all this started in 2016–2017 that liberal authoritarianism was vastly more dangerous than Trump’s arrival on the political scene. And here we are. I am reminded of my Tokyo years, when we used to say the governing Liberal Democratic Party was neither liberal nor democratic nor a party.
As the Democratic Party has reconstituted itself in response to the Clinton defeat seven years ago, it is neither democratic nor, given how it operates, properly a party. It is a diabolic machine built to seize and hold power without reference to law or institutional integrity.
There are some suggestive polling numbers in the Michael Goodwin column mentioned above. Half of those surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos in June, as Hunter Biden’s plea bargain took shape, thought the president’s son was getting favorable treatment. This included a third of all Democrats, count ’em, and more than 40 percent of those independent of either party. Translation: Half the country recognizes the White House and the DOJ as corrupted.
In the same line, a Quinnipiac University poll conducted at roughly the same time found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed think the DOJ’s indictments of Donald Trump are politically motivated. Translation: Most people recognize that A–G Garland has corrupted the DOJ as an impartial institution charged with enforcing the law without favor.
I do not argue here that the game is up for the Biden regime. There are many more moves to come on this perilous, play-for-keeps game board. Mainstream media are so far holding the line, but at this point they may as well be telling us the sky is not blue and it does not get dark at night. There are limits —somewhere out there — and a denouement of one of another kind coming, surely.
Between Now & Election Day
Biden and Garland at a Medal of Valor ceremony at the White House in May. (White House, Hannah Foslien)
Let us finish with a consideration of what may come during our 16 months of uncertainty.
Impeachment proceedings are an obvious possibility at this point — and seem a lot closer than they did even a few weeks ago. The decisive factor here is how seriously the House Oversight Committee follows the lines of inquiry now opening up to it. I cannot read this at the moment. Even among those driven by purely partisan sentiment, it is a very grave matter to impeach a president when you know you have the goods on him. The Trump impeachments were spectacle and intended as such. The material coming to the surface against Biden is entirely more serious.
A reader of these columns suggested in a recent comment thread that, should the corruption charges mount such that denial and games of pretend are no longer feasible, Biden may resort to a major, all-bets-are-off escalation in Ukraine such that the mess at home gets shoved into the background and —most favorable outcome — never returns to the headlines. More perverse, inhumane things have happened. Two weeks after I voted for the first and last time in my life, for Bill Clinton in 1998, he sent a cruise missile into the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan to get people to stop thinking about his pleasures with Monica Lewinsky. This is a minor case next to numerous others.
Biden is on the very brink of a Nixonian, I-am-not-a-crook moment in his corruption messes. He is already deflecting in ridiculous fashion. Asked about the bribes he replied to a reporter, “Where’s the money?” When Miranda Devine, the New York Post columnist, asked him recently why Hunter was named to a well-paying position in Ukraine in 2014, Joe replied, “Because he’s a very bright guy.” Joe Biden is buck-dancing at this point. I cannot see that he will get away with doing so much longer.
The question here is simple. A short while after President Richard Nixon’s not-a-crook speech, he was forced to resign. Will Biden meet the same fate? The problem here is to whom Biden would hand off. At this point in the American story, the Deep State or whatever you wish to call it seems to prefer semi-competent or incompetent White House occupants who stay out of the way while they run the imperium. But Kamala Harris … well, once again there are limits.
The biggest worry we face is that, should desperation among Democrats spread as is very possible now, they will corrupt the political process yet further than it already is, and we are in for one or another degree of civil disorder. I rate this a strong possibility. The liberal authoritarians, their dream of domestic hegemony a sand castle washing out to sea, have nowhere else to turn, as the case of Devon Archer bitterly reminds us.
Archer, formerly in business with Hunter Biden, was previously found guilty of some kind of swindle involving fraudulent bonds and was awaiting his reporting date to begin serving a sentence of one year and one day. No date had been set.
Now to the chase: Archer was scheduled to appear at a House Oversight Committee hearing early this week, during which he was expected to testify under oath that he was present on various occasions when Joe and Hunter Biden conducted their influence-peddling business.
Out of nowhere, the DOJ ordered him over the weekend to report immediately to the prison where he was to begin serving his sentence. At one point, Archer was reported to be in hiding — in hiding from the judicial authorities charged with enforcing the law. And immediate uproar — James Comer, who chairs Oversight, denounced the move as straight-out obstruction of justice — appears to have forced the DOJ to relent. Archer testified for several hours behind closed doors on Monday.
Comer at an event in 2019 in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, Public domain)
We do not know everything Archer said, and his lawyer, who has close ties to the Democratic hierarchy, may have advised him to resort to “I do not recall” in reply to numerous questions. But Archer seems nonetheless to have said plenty.
Joe Biden worked intimately and regularly with Hunter as his son built “the brand,” Archer testified. Hunter put “the Big Guy” on his speakerphone during more than 20 calls in the course of his influence-peddling projects. There were dinners with Hunter and those to whom he was selling access to “my guy.”
The spin coming out of the Democratic quadrant since Archer’s testimony is quite beyond belief. Hunter wasn’t peddling access to Joe: That was just a ruse to fool those with whom he was dealing. All those telephone calls were just father-son stuff. Yes, he met some of Hunter’s business “associates” and, yes, there were dinners at Georgetown restaurants, but it was all just “casual conversation.” They talked about “the weather.”
The ice across which these people are skating is getting awfully thin, I would say.
Lies told straight to our faces. More or less complete unaccountability. Lawlessness in the name of the law. This is what I mean by acts of desperation. And what I mean when I suggest we must brace ourselves for what is to come.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
This article is from ScheerPost.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
81 million votes was impossible. We are still not ready to face the implications.
The US isn’t a Democracy and our President is appointed by intelligence agencies subservient to faceless Kleptocrats. Yet, we still discuss elections and the rule of law as if it matters. But I suppose if it was all theater, Trump wouldn’t be facing 700 years in Prison, which may actually be an indication that Democracy still has a pulse. The situation would be far more hopeless if Trump was paragliding with Richard Branson instead.
Re “Lawlessness in the name of the law. This is what I mean by acts of desperation.”
Acts of desperation?!?
This has been the normal US mode of operation, domestically and in foreign affairs(e.g., “rules based order”), for decades!!!
I figure the democrats, being the experts they are at developing essentially nothing other than circular firing squads, are about ready for the fork test because they are done. Again the direct results of partisan, two party politics.
Could it be that the Deep State came up with the Trump / Clinton circus simply to create an opportunity to have a war in progress and forestall the election of the next president because of it?
Patrick is right about the democrats! I’m not sure they could have done more to get us into this position.
You think the republicans have got the “red ass” right now wait until they impeach Biden and still can’t get rid of him. I’m thinking the VP would be primed and ready to become the first true Dictator in the White House. Just what we all need a former prosecutor to rule us!!
I’m pretty sick of this BS by now!
Thanks CN
I was a Democrat for 45 years. You can do it too, as difficult as it may be for you. Grifter? What payoff did Trump ever get for anything? He may have lost as much as a $1B trying to save us from this nightmare.
It appears that no one will challenge Biden. I don’t think this is a good thing. But politicians on both sides are going to side with their party over country Trump does have challengers, but if you think any of them are going to beat out Trump, but as the trite saying goes I have some swamp land or bridge for sale. I am 76, I can’t remember the last time that an incumbent president has been seriously challenged by a member of his own party and come close to losing the nomination. And partdon the pun but I don’t thing the charges are being trumped up here. Of course Al Capone pobably said the same thing when he got sent up fo tax evasion. He didn’t go to prison for the worst things he did. I don’t think there is any doubt that Trump has evaded taxes but you aren’t going to send any president up the river for that. While I think this is a great source I just don’t read it enough to know if anyone here has written anything negative about Trump. He is hardly a paragon of virue. Say what you will about mob bosses they are probably more honest than Trump. I am sure most here have seen the Ukraine Gate documentary series. I don’t thing the producers have an axe to grind so I think it was an honest presnetaiton. I have tweeted it out to many who support Biden. As for Hunter nothig has been proven yest. If I am not mistaken Archer kind of supported Hunter in congressional hearings. Did he lie? I have no idea. I didn’t realize he had been in hiding. My fault for not paying more attetion but it is really hard to keep up at times. Like I said I have not read enough here, so I am wondering if any one has written about for instance what has been going on in Ohio. You can go look at David Pepper’s twitter page. I refuse to call it X. While I don’t believe in any censsor ship Musk has not always been a bastion of freedom of speech there. There are plenty of things that Republicans ae doing or want to do that I don’t think are being written about here.
I don’t believe that the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden Corruption scandal will sink the Biden administration as it is being run by republicans as a rerun of the Mueller Investigation. Biden is unpopular even with Democrats for his crack down on free speech, mishandling of immigration, the overall economy and his countless gaffes in public revealing his mental incompetence. My hope and prayers are that Russia will prevail in defeating the Ukraine military and proceed with implementing a fair and just settlement which will include helping to rebuild a neutral Ukraine, I believe this more than anything will flip the narrative for many Democratic voters as they finally realize they have been grossly misled by the MSM, NATO, Pentagon and State dept. Blinken and Sullivan will be forced to resign to be replaced hopefully by far more sane individuals, Biden will pull an LBJ. The question then becomes who replaces Biden/Harris for the Democratic ticket.
The phrase “liberal authoritarians” is intentionally misleading, especially when you consider the fact that the US has been in hard right territory for 50 years now, when the private sector assumed corporate governance and “self-regulation”, leaving the catastrophic mess in its wake.
“The system of governance that has shaped western predatory imperialism is very resilient and will prove hard to kill. Regardless, killed it must be because its predatory methods aren’t only aimed at foreign colonies: this beast invariably sows mayhem abroad and misery at home. The present struggle is the struggle for all of humanity.”
“Fascism isn’t the merger of corporations and government that is too vague, and too easy to confuse. Fascism is government functions being replaced by private corporations. Fascism is when the public good is replaced by private profit.” ~ article, The Economy of Evil
Oh, dear: there is very little to disagree with in this article but given how well-manipulated the Democratic voting sheep are the article”s content will largely just be dismissed by those who might benefit the most from understanding just how venal the party establishment is when one looks at how little it has done to advance the significant goals that it pretends to believe in rather than used them to generate voting support for real change in its various voting blocs which it plays to its advantage.
A prime example was failing for the half century during which Democrats frequently controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress to make serious attempts to turn Roe v. Wade into established law in order to retain the campaign advantages which publicly supporting abortion provided. Another was failing to enact Medicare for All or other serious Health Care reform when Democrats had similar levels of control (an extensive investigation of just how slyly they managed to pass off blame for the fiasco which Affordable Care Act turned into on Republican and other conservative opposition can be found at hxxps://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/5qghpv/who_murdered_the_public_option/ by replacing the ‘xx’ with ‘tt’). And the lengthy string of Biden’s campaign promises left dangling provides many more recent examples.
So what we all should be asking ourselves is just how much has giving Democrats these periods of control produced significant benefit to existential issues like addressing climate change and world peace, and the answer is not much if any. And the resulting question is if we really do want real change how can we achieve it. My own answer is by rocking the boat – hard – in order to shake up the system enough to give us an opportunity to turn out the two major parties’ establishments (which work far too well together to maintain the status quo), the corporate-owned media, and the deep state elements that support them. Trump offered hope for such but failed to deliver, in significant part because the Democratic establishment learned nothing about self-reform from Hillary’s 2016 defeat and simply continued its decades-long tactics of making its dependable sheep more afraid of Republicans than they were of our national deterioration.
Did Trump learn enough from his previous experience to focus better on at least some decent goals? Even if not, he could likely still shake things up enough to make SOME change more possible. The only other non-establishment likely candidates in major parties seem to be Bernie again (though the Democratic establishment is too implacably anti-progressive to allow that), RFK Jr. who hasn’t won me over yet (and also may be too uncontrollable for the Dem establishment’s taste – remember how they railroaded Howard Dean two decades ago for simply being an anti-war candidate), and Cornel West who might manage to rise up like Ralph Nader once did third-party-style. Just some ideas of how to try to go about making the status quo less unchangeable.
Patrick Lawrence has succinctly summed up the danger of America’s trajectory towards being a party authoritarian state which started with JFK’s assassination. Trump was not supposed to win in 2016 and the fix was in for 2020. Trump comes with baggage, sure; but he is probably the only person who has the capacity, tenacity and motivation to ‘drain the swamp’. The more Democrats try through multiple bogus criminal lawsuits to prevent Trump running in 2024, the more obvious becomes the architecture of their one-party state tyranny.
Whether one is liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, love or hate Trump, he is all that stands between the Democrat/Deep State tyranny or freedom and between nuclear annihilation and survival.
Something I do not understand is why ‘greens’ do not recognize that the greatest environmental threat to our planet is nuclear war. Western media is trying to condition populations to believe that nuclear war is winnable. This is insanity. Would Biden or any person in that coterie of warmongers known as the Biden White House have the understanding and skills exhibited by JFK during the Cuban missile crisis? The frightening reality is that that they would not.
Are you seriously convinced that Trump gives a toss about anyone but himself? That he is “all that stands between annihilation and survival?” Why? What gives you any faith in this guy whatsoever? He’s just the flip-side of the same rotten coin as Democrats. He’ll tell people what they want to hear to get elected and then do anything but.
Trump doesn’t care, he was the one who withdrew the US from the treaty in 2018. He’ll tell you what you want to hear, then get in office and do only what serves his own ego. No better than the Democrats. Give me a break with this “Trump is our only hope” nonsense…
Excellent and articulate you make a very good case for prosecuting the DNC under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Now who will be responsible for carrying out such a dubious task (big smile)?
Knaves, zealots, nincompoops and obsessive-compulsives. Not a voice of reason, calm demeanor or meditation among the bunch.
And to some extent the full spectrum of classical fraudulent criminals—that is the DNC and those they have installed in power.
And at such a significant moment in human history. Reckless and feckless, and sitting at the controls of civilizational destiny.
It is not a scarcity of reason that is exhibited by the Biden Regime and the heads of the NATO vassal states. It is straight opposition to reason. And yes, they are the epitome of ‘always wrong, yet never in doubt.’ This is how sick these people are. They now believe that they can dictate what you think. And punish you for thinking the wrong thing. This is really happening. They can’t live with anyone who says or even thinks anything in conflict with the official party beliefs. So desperate is their need to control everyone. This 6-Jan case against Trump should be rejected by any rational judge in about two seconds.
Yet, here we are. Rational thought itself, a.k.a. simple common sense is now on trial in the U.S.
The government’s case against Donald Trump is “dangerous because it sets up the federal government as the arbiter of truth,” argues law prof Jonathan Turley at The Hill. “The government acknowledges that the Constitution protects false statements made in campaigns, but it insists that Trump must have known that his statements were false and therefore was engaged in fraudulent statements to obstruct” the electoral results. Yet the case falls apart “if Trump actually did (or does) believe that he did not lose the election.” The indictment “essentially charges Trump with not accepting the ‘truth,’?” but there’s “no limiting principle to this indictment.” If Trump is convicted, it would set a precedent in which “the government would choose between which politicians are lying and which are lying without cause.”
In the July – August edition of Smithsonian Magazine you will find on page 30 and article about George Washington’s Fair Well Address, this article is rather small, the three pages dedicated the most space to very nice glossy photos and the article is less that three columns.
Left hand of page 32 in the final column, at the end of that column Washington reveals his thoughts on a two party system and the authoritarian mindset that will result from biased partisan policies creating regional differences that will endanger the republic. He reveals how little he thought of highly partisan two party politics, his thoughts are eerily familiar to the present condition of U.S. politics.
I think that what some Russians say about Joe Biden is instructive. They say there are two Joe Bidens: (1) the biological Joe Biden who reads the speeches: (2) and the collective Joe Biden who writes the speeches and makes the decisions.
” I think you can’t underestimate just how foolish the West is when it comes to the whole question of Ukraine”
You can’t overestimate. Lately this error appears frequently.
“There is only one way to explain this shambles: Every one of these crises traces back to the Democratic Party’s obsession with taking and holding power more or less indefinitely to suit its hubristic, end-of-history “narrative” of righteous liberal triumph. ”
I explain thus. The Ds quite openly said they chose Biden at the insistence of its donors. His qualifications were an unfailingly pro-business stance and the certainty that corruption would flourish. He has excelled in both these categories, hence the D’s determination that he be nominated again. It isn’t about narrative, it’s about maintaining cash flow. The narrative is subordinate to this ultimate goal.
Ukraine is all about cash flow. I knew the US would love to bomb the Nordstreem pipeline in order to sell $60 billion in expensive gas to Europe every year. The arms manufacturers made a fortune “selling” unwanted obsolete weapons to Ukraine at skyhigh prices. Ukraine will never be able to pay, so the US taxpayer is the true buyer. Since taxes cannot be increased we get inflation, further alienating the populace.
The other big motive is desperation. The Ds know that the people have turned against them. This includes the police and the soldiers in the army. Only classic oppression can maintain their hold on power in the face of rebellion. This is a dominant propaganda campaign combined with severe punishment of those who protest too vigorously. Jacob Chancely, the so-called QAnon shaman, was welcomed into the prison system with eleven months in solitary confinement. Child molesters and murderers are not treated this way. It was later show that exculpatory evidence had been concealed by the prosecution on bogus national security grounds. This evidence showed that the capitol police supporting the rebellion.
On January 7th 2021 I heard the chief of the capitol police angrily threaten to punish those police who collaborated with the rebellion. After that this story disappeared completely, down down down a memory hole.
Chris Hedges reports that when he was arrested at the capitol the police said to him, “Keep protesting. We have to take you away, but keep doing what you’re doing.”
The Ds are trying to get the soldiers back by heavily recruiting women and minorities. This will not work. There isn’t enough time.
The Ds not only cancelled their debates, they will punish any candidates who dare debate outside the auspices of the party. This move is blatantly undemocratic — who could fail to notice this? — and will surely prove unpopular, but Biden is so far gone that such a lockdown is the only way to push through his nomination. In an equally shocking move, in 2020 the Ds removed all candidates other than Joe Biden from the New York primary ballot, thus reproducing the election system of the USSR. Candidate Andrew Yang sued the Ds, won, and the ballot was restored, but this shows the indifference to presenting even a facade of public involvement.
The current administration reminds greatly of the Brezhnev USSR. Leonid Brezhnev was so demented that during a major address when he got the bottom of a page of his script he returned to the top and read it out again. [Source : Arkady N. Shevchenko, former Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR] So…why was Brezhnev chosen over the ubercompetent Alexei Kosygin? Leonid would allow corruption to flourish. That was the unifying principle of the Communist Party. You know how that ended.
An all too accurate reflection of the putrid state of the Democratic Party in the United States, an authoritarian, antidemocratic (notwithstanding its name) reality, and this from the real left, real progressives and real liberals, none of those gerunds describing that political party today, notwithstanding efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to characterize that putrid amalgamation of power mad, warmongering malcontents using those noble adjectives.
And it is so fitting that our “authoritarian anti-democratic” Administration would be throwing $150 Billion USD into another authoritarian anti-democratic regime 5,000 miles from our shores under the guise of “saving democracy” in Ukraine .
We didn’t find the WMD in Iraq and we’re not going to save democracy in Ukraine either.
… or find it either.
Pat, your key word was “demonic” as to the ruling
elite of the Democratic Party. And New Testament
scripture supports your observation of those modern
day Pharisees: “You are of your father the devil, and
your will is to do your father’s desires” (Jn.8.44).
Obviously, you’re in very good company.
It strikes me as odd the similarities between Shrub and Turdblossom and the present crew. Rove was all hot to trot for a “permanent Republican majority” and they were well on their way via fair means and foul. And they’ve sorta got their Republican majority, a majority of Republican lites. Neither Obama nor Biden qualify as real Democrats, they’re just Republican lites. Trump is just a New York City grifter. The important thing to note here is that neither party is interested in governing. Both are focused on power.
OBTW, I just noticed. You didn’t vote for Slick Willie in 1998. His last presidential election was in 1996.
Grifter? Trump has lost somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 billion dollars.
Patrick Lawrence’s post is of course just one man’s opinion. All of it except for one verifiable fact. President Biden’s “senility has been publicly on display for the past two years and change”. I’m certainly not suggesting anyone should vote for Donald Trump, a self serving grifter, as a substitute for someone suffering from a neurocognitive disorder. However, it does seem to me one would have to be delusional to vote for Joe Biden as President of the United States..
An opinion, yes, but a well-informed one nonetheless.
Rosemont Seneca Partners, founded in 2011 by Christopher Heinz (John Kerry’s stepsons) Devon Archer and Hunter Biden. The marketed allure to Rosemont Seneca’s perspective customers, it is “who we know.” Allow the Justice Department simply start there. Rosemont Seneca has been defunct since 2014. What else occurred in 2014, oh-yes, the Maidan uprising. Joe Biden’s Ukraine, Hunter Biden’s seat on Burisma.
With the Nuland’s leaked phone call choosing Ukraine’s next leader, one can also hear her state she awaits Joe Biden’s “atta boy” before crowning the new puppet leader of Ukraine. Another article by Patrick Lawrence dated Nov. 2019 he steers the reader another internet news cite, MoA. Moon of Alabama published a well documented timeline of events concerning Burisma and Joe Biden. A long list of compiled dates the reader can see Joe Biden’s intervention against the prosecutor general, Shokin, of Ukraine. Joe Biden managed to get the investigator fired by withholding one billion dollars of aid. Videos cover Biden bragging about it.
Americans endured five years of phony tales we know as Russiagate. It set the stage for the public’s mindless disdain of Russians. The background now laid made it easy for Biden and his neocons to use Ukraine as a proxy for war with Russia. Billions of dollars, human blood spilled and massive suffering to say noting about taunting a nuclear powerful country.
This alone is cause for impeachment. Include the Biden administration’s censoring media, social media and hiding crimes committed by his son. Poor Hunter. A lost soul. Much like many of the lost souls Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill preys upon. Time is up. I cringe thinking of Kamala Harris, but, we are left no choice. Sixteen months is too long with Biden at the helm.
Using the dramatic closing of Biden’s March 2022 speech referring to the Russian leader, allows me turn turn the table on Joe Biden, “For God’s Sake, This Man Cannot Remain in Power.”
Of course in the late 60s and 70s we fought to bring an end to the war and the other madness, but we eventually gave up.
Now, decades later, the so-called ‘good guys’ of days gone by are responsible for the implosion. It is astounding to see, really.
But what of the other side of this coin, the ‘lawlessness’ and the ransacking of cars and stores?
This crowd has so far had no reason to come armed, but surely those who will follow in their footsteps would be playing by a completely different set of rules.
Excellent column (except for voting for Bill Clinton in ’98!) summarizing many people’s sense of what is going on and the frightening spectre of what may happen.
The fact that the demos are so confident in biden running again tells me a couple of things:
1. Obama and his staff, susan rice, lisa monoco, samantha power, cal sustein, et al are completely ok with status quo and they can continue running the country into the ground on race based policy. It is commonly known that obama keeps his dc residence and holds “staff” meetings frequently with what passes for biden’s staff.
2. The obama cabal and his handlers are confident that they can forget about trump and will duplicate the 2020 81 million vote count in 2024, that is if a 2024 election is even held.
I sense that Blinken, Sullivan and Nuland are among the controlling parties, and there always seems to be a hint of Hillary Clinton lingering in the background. I wonder how much she is on the phone with them every day.
The current Blue-Team is one the most delusional bunch I have ever seen in US politics, where they really do act as if they strongly believe their own lies. For example, they act like Russiagate was real, even though it was opposition research that they themselves paid for.
You know their thinking here, as usual, is that there is nowhere else for liberals and left wingers to go, because the Republicans are even worse. That is their entire strategy. As long as the Red-Team looks a little more insane, enough people will “vote Blue no matter who”. I hope they turn out to be wrong again this time. Not that I could sand another Trump presidency, but at least he would not be trying to whip up WWIII with Russia and China at the same time. No one but Biden is that stupid.
“Lions, Tigers and Bears, oh my!”
Somehow I feel like I am living in the Twilight zone!
I do not believe that Biden is a proper president especially with his falling down frequently and seeming to be brain dead Add to that the money sent to the freaky character, Zylenskyy —-did he think being a war president would make him win? Americans are losing jobs and probably their minds too.
Sadly Biden’s horrid son is a nightmare , and add the ridiculous way Biden left the Middle East, and denying his 7th grandchild for so long. Leave now Biden, Kaamala will take over and the Dems will have to find a sterling character quickly. And sorry, Kamala—- the men of the world will refuse to select you as the Dem nomination. Sorry, but you have been dissed since you stood up to that Biden idiot during the debates as Biden seemed to be an idiot who struggled in the debates. Biden—-ANNOUNCE you will not be running again —let Kamala take over. We realize the Dems will run someone else for president because there are too many in America that do not believe in having a woman president either.
I am sorry Earth, that we the humans have treated you so badly. Earth once upon a time dissed the dinosaurs when the comet hit—will we the humans be next? And democratic party—pull yourself together because things do not look promising for any kind of future. : (
Besides Biden, I hate you for creating wars on a planet that could possibly soon eliminate life, including the human race —and as the planet seems to be running out of water—-will Earth become a twin of Mars?
Except for the fact that Kamala Harris is ignorant as hell, with a shallow mind and plainly incompetent for the office.
It isn’t just powerful right wingers and the indistinguishable masses who have a problem with prejudice. Sure, the Ivy Dems say, we have no problem with race, gender, sexual orientation. All you have to have is parents who were college professors or some other obvious marker that qualifies you as belonging among the professional and administrative elite.
(P.S.–Never, ever mention that verboten term “class.” Nor ever acknowledge that BIPOC and LGBTQI activists are usually explicit about the need also to address issues of the working class and poor since they are so often among them.)
As recently pointed out in an open letter to the DOJ by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein, if the DOJ wanted to keep Trump from running they should have charged him with inciting the January 6 insurrection, and the invoked the 14th amendment. They still haven’t done so …
I’d say there is a case but too weak to succeed.
The only problem with this assessment is that the same can be said for the Republican Party – and since those are the only two viable parties, we’re screwed.
We are indeed.
The “GOP” was founded in 1854 in opposition to slavery. They did pretty well in the 1856 election and by 1860 dominated the four-party election, leading to the secession attempt by the losers.
Patrick, Thank you for this concise overview of just where we stand now, in our once-democratic republic. The permanent war machine, the corrupting influence of big money in politics and government, 50 years of diligent work by the oligarchic right–as shown by the Powell Memo– and the debased economics of Neo-liberalism coupled with its foreign policy half, Neo-Conservatism, have all conspired to bring us to the present moment. While it would be tempting to just say, “Pass the popcorn,” the present moment is one that will directly affect us, for better or ill. And as Patrick makes plain, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the future, given the actors involved, and their demonstrated incompetence.
No “leader” is going to come to your rescue. Only widespread grassroots action can save the situation.
Republicans in the House have faced a dilemma since gaining a majority of House seats. Should they impeach Joe Biden out of office before the 2024 election or leave the Democrats holding the bag with the imbecile Biden as their nominee? Rather than try to unravel the labyrinth of Biden crime family shell companies, why not just examine the bank accounts of Biden family members and have each of them explain: 1. Where all the money came from. 2. What services were performed in exchange for the payments. But removing Biden from office could be the greatest gift that Republicans could bestow on Democrats. They would then be free to choose Gavin Newsome or RFK Jr. as their nominee. Democrats, the Deep State and their legacy press propaganda organ seem to be doing everything possible to ensure that Trump is the Republican nominee. Biden’s sole hope of winning in 2024 rests on the hatred of Trump being so deep that enough people can be hypnotized into forgetting the unmitigated disaster that engulfed the world as soon as Biden was sworn in as President in 2021. Thus both parties seek to ensure delivery of the rematch that no one wants. If either party can free itself of the 2020 nominee, whomever they nominate in 2024 could well sweep to victory. The likely outcome will be that both parties and the American people will get precisely the government they deserve, good and hard. Both parties should print t-shirts proclaiming: 2024 I’m with stupid.
The D’s cleverly worked to make Trump the nominee. The idea was that he would be the candidate most easily defeated. We know what happened next.
Astute analysis, the situation reminds me of the classic Chinese Finger Trap . . . .
Did anyone watch Biden on the Jimmy Kimmel show a few nights back (Friday night I think) ?
His appearance literally made me wonder if he has a body double. The guy looked 20 years younger
and sounded decently lucid (although still not making much sense, but he could talk a blue streak).
Jill and daughter Ashley were (supposedly) in the audience, but both were wearing Yuge cloth face masks
which covered everything but their eyes . . . . so weird.
Biden was on Kimmel over a year ago.
When you compare the phoenix-rising skills of this president, in spite of his ‘senile’ state, I couldn’t be prouder of this 80 year old commander in chief. That the GOP has launched its Project 2025 plan that wants to ensure no plan for our existential threat of climate change is a statement that the Democrat Party is the party with the moral compass. No wonder mental health is failing among our youth with the dismal future they see. Which party gives them hope? The Democrats. Which party shows the worst corruption? The GOP. Isn’t this obvious, with the number of indictments mounting against the former one? Any corruption Hunter Biden displays clearly, to this commenter, has no statement on the corruption of our current president. Different circumstance from the former president. I will take this ‘senile’ president over any candidate running for the GOP. His vim and vigor is still evident, to hold our country together, with grace and obvious skill.
Very, very funny!
I thought it was rather lame satire actually..
I can’t decide if it’s satire or serious. I hope it’s the former. (Perhaps Priscilla can enlighten us.)
Do you actually think that young Americans feel more hopeful under Biden than they did under Trump? I find that highly doubtful. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are riddled with corruption and incompetence, and both of their leaders are mentally deficient. In truth, the Dems and Repubs are two factions of a uni-party that serves the interests of the very wealthy and professional classes. A political system that serves up such disgusting choices needs to be overturned.
You are living in that big river De Nile. Your comment expresses an inexcusable ignorance of world and national events.
get off the delusional meds, QUICKLY!!
Ms. Rich, ‘Any corruption Hunter Biden displays clearly, to this commenter, has no statement on the corruption of our current president.’ You must have missed the public statement of your hero Joe Biden, when he bragged about how he extorted the U.S. puppet government in Ukraine for a $Billion in foreign aid, unless and until they fired the prosecutor who was about to expose the corruption at Burisma, the employer of his absurdly overpaid son Hunter. Do you swell with pride at the acts of the Biden State Department’s Victoria Nuland? Who has been responsible for the deaths of a half million or so people in Ukraine. All to satisfy her deranged blood lust for Russia and Putin. Delusional hatred for Trump and/or Republicans is no moral compass.
In addition to Hunter, weren’t Pelosi and Kerry’s kids also feeding Ukraine pay to play kickback trough? No doubt there were others. Probably some Republican politician’s kids too. Glass houses explains their reluctance to impeach. It takes a village to pillage.
Ma’am, that’s truly Rich.
Why yes! This President is proof that coming from the prime corporate tax shelter state is no barrier to caring for the majority working class.
Or that just because the Dem Party ditched the New Deal in the late ’70s doesn’t mean the Dem leadership can’t talk about similar ideals.
So then it doesn’t mean anything that this same D group did for the Rust Belt what they did to the Wall St. manipulators who caused the ’08 crash–nothing.
Go Dems! Because the lesser evil of a slow death by neolib econopathy and neocon empire is better than the greater evil of a fast death by the same.
This is one of the most accurate articles I have read so far on the Democratic Party and it’s delusional policies, both foreign and domestic. Mr. Lawrence hit the bullseye in exposing the corrupt Biden Family and Joey Boy’s scandalous regime.
And the “limousine liberals” make excuse after excuse for his detrimental and dangerous policies, with their political fantasies of “reforming” the DNC. DENIAL is the word, with capital letters. A pipe dream for sure. Trump is not the answer either in the 2024 election. I’ll take Professor Cornell West (Green Party) over any of the DNC or RNC candidates.
The U.S. is on a downward spiral into the abyss of former empires. We’re exceptional, alright! At waging war, pandemic usury, national culture destruction of other nations and blatant hypocrisy.
It is the people behind the throne who Biden to run. They want to keep running the affairs. Biden is basically the public image policies they chose for him.
and so have nearly all of these presidents been since, when? since they shot JFK, right?
puppets reading lines and shaking hands while the business goes on behind closed doors by the people who actually decide and get things done.
it was quite obviously true of Reagan and Dubya, so why not Clintoon and Obama? because they were better PR men at selling the delusion? because they talked too much about the kill lists they had to sign?
the president and focusing on who will be him is a major distraction. the legislature is where our crap starts flowing downhill to the peasants while the cream starts rising upwards. people should stop being so perpetually obsessed with essentially a figurehead, even if he is supposed to be “in charge” of the war machine.
maybe we should ask JFK how that turned out.
There truly is a deep state in this country, but most people have got it wrong. You are on the right track. Now follow the money and ask who controls the DNC (and the RNC).
Anyone who doesn’t think by this time that the “Dems” have instituted fascism in this country must have his/her head examined by a (non-woke) physician. I say that as a onetime supporter of the Democratic Party. To Paraphrase Elon Musk: I didn’t leave the party – the party left me.
I can’t recall any incumbent presidents who had televised debates with their own party. Please refresh my memory. Thanks.
You never heard of the primaries?
It is funny how the term “liberal” now has no relation to what it originally meant. If you say “liberal authoritarian” it just sounds bizarre. In the olden days, liberal meant an environmentalist, or anti-war protester, not Joe Biden. Joe Biden is an ultra-conservative Democrat. So how does that translate to “liberal authoritarian”. Let me please ask everyone to refer to people like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden as Blue-Team authoritarians, not liberal ones. There isn’t a liberal bone in their bodies. Then you can call the Republicans Red-Team authoritarians, and everyone will know exactly what you mean in both instances.
Great point: political terms are thrown around with very little understanding and/or very vague definitions.
At political compass .org, HRC, Biden etc. are plotted in the two dimensional political spectrum, they are firmly RIGHT-WING authoritarians, based on their policies, not the blah blah. The Rs are also right-wing authoritarians. In the USA, we only have a choice between two flavors of criminal right-wing authoritarians.
So, the title of the article should read: “The Mess the D/R Dictatorship Have Made.” Mr. Lawrence apparently still believes in the fairy-tale of US democracy and the illusion of choice.
As Jimmy Carter said after the Citizens United decision: “The US is an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” Too bad most people ignored him. (Of course I don’t need Carter to tell me that, but his candor was refreshing)
In George Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 the state redefines words, altering language itself so that contrary urges cannot even be thought of. I hereby dub such redefinition the Orwellization of words.
Hmm, how about a list of the recently Orwellized words of today. Liberal, conservative, right, left, racist, populist, terrorist, genocide, democracy, socialist, journalism, inflation, law. A paleo liberal stood for peace and free speech. The Orwellized liberal plumps for perpetual war and blanket censorship. Your old school conservative was for a strong defense of the Americas and a balanced budget. Post-Orwellization they go for world empire and a stupendously jaw-dropping debt. A leftist stood for blue-collar labor. Now anything the Democratic Party advocates is leftist, no matter that it is overwhelmingly pro Big Money. A terrorist used to be any private party that spread terror (it was conveniently OK for recognized states to terrorize), now it’s anyone the state doesn’t like, up to and including the feared “information terrorist.” Genocide was a determined attempt to exterminate a population, now it just means “something I really really don’t like.” Journalism was exposing the dirty little secrets of the state, now it’s hiding those same secrets. Inflation used to be a spiral of wage increases causing price increases trigger more wage increases and so forth. There aren’t any wage increases any more so now it just means price increases. Let’s finish with the “rule of law,” which Orwellizes to “do what we say or we’ll come after you.” This seems to me the very opposite of the rule of law. This shows I have failed to Orwellize myself, disqualifying me for participation in the “democratic process.” Self-Orwellization. It’s a thing.
genocide | ?jen??s?d |
noun
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group: a campaign of genocide | [count noun] : news of genocides went unreported.
At half a million deaths and counting, the sacrifice of the Ukrainian people qualifies as a genocide. As the architect of this war, Victoria Nuland qualifies as a war criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity. If the International Criminal Court had any credibility whatsoever, a warrant would have already been issued for her arrest. Biden, Blinken and Sullivan are likewise guilty of these same crimes against humanity. These are facts. Not some humorous academic exercise.
it’s the difference between cultural liberalism and Liberalism as a political/legal/social project of the post-enlightenment. specifically, both parties are NEOliberals politically/economically (property uber alles, my property means more than anyone’s human rights, society and social goods practically don’t exist etc.) but only one claims to be liberal culturally.