The speech that referred to Palestinian suffering was a journey into a universe of political guile from a president who had just approved sending $20 billion more weapons to Israel, writes Norman Solomon.
Biden addressing the Democratic National Convention Monday night. (C-span still)
By Norman Solomon
Common Dreams
An observation from George Orwell — “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” — is acutely relevant to how President Joe Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night.
His words fit into a messaging template now in its 11th month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.
“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7th.”
It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.
Applause swelled as Biden continued:
“We’re working around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”
In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.
Convention hall cheering Biden Monday night. (C-Span still)
And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.
The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was, in a broader context, the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president.
Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation.
“I just don’t think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said. “I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”
Beinart continued:
“And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it’s not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza.
It’s central to his legacy. It’s central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”
Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring.
Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The Western induced hypocrisy is SICKENING!!! to put it in printable words.
Not mentioned by the above comments is the likelihood that K Harris will loyally follow in the footsteps of genocide Joe, Her goofball Zionist husband has already announced this to the World. And checkout the Democratic Party’s Platform: A servile groveling document swearing fealty to our Israeli rulers.
And after all this, millions will still go and vote for KH or the DT. Both candidates will continue to support the Genocide of Palestine with our public resources. More proxy war against Russia, more provocations of China, more violence toward Iran, Syria etc. More economic siege warfare against Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria… resulting in more 100s of thousands dead and displacement.
And here at home: more housing crisis, more health care crisis, more oligarchy, more disparity in income and wealth, more crumbling infrastructure.
Why do millions willingly support genocide, war, and oligarchy, while undermining their own interests at home? Are US dwellers inherently evil? Intellectually lazy? Apathetic? Hypocrites? Brainwashed? Stricken with Collective Stockholm Syndrome? Or is the US (and vassals) one big suicide-death cult? All of the above?
AOTA. They’ve been systematically brainwashed that killing children (overseas, that is) is just one of those things we might regret and bemoan after the fact, but reconize as not only inevitable, but natural, like the sunrise. So shut your piehole and pay your taxes so we can kill more.
The Genocide Democrats told other lies. For instance, Joe Biden claimed: “Europe from the time of Napoleon Bonaparte in the 19th century has never looked at Russia without fear.”
I know Americans don’t know history, but the 19th Century was actually the one peaceful time in European History. From Napoleon to World War 1, Europe went nearly a century without such major wars. A truly ‘Historic’ feat for the Europeans that otherwise have known nothing but war, war and more wars in their relations with each other.
What kept the Peace after Napoleon was the “Concert of Europe”, which was a collection of conservative monarchies. The key ones being the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire, aka, the collecitve ‘winners’ of the Napoleonic Wars. They collectively suppressed any uprisings and generally kept the peace in Europe for nearly a century. It began to break down as Prussia turned into the unification of Germany.
The French especially were not quaking in fear at the Russians. What scared the French was the rise and unification of Germany. And the Russians were the French allies against the growing German power. Bismarck and Napoleon III fought a Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the French made an alliance with Russia against Germany. The French depended on Russian help should the Germans attack them again, and France and Russia were close allies from the 1870’s through World War II. This Franco-Russian Alliance was a key part of the Alliance system that launched World War 1. The Russian Czar felt committed to their allies in France and vice-versa, as Austria Hungary attacked Serbia and lit the match in the powder magazine.
How do you know when a Democrat is lying? Well, the obvious bit about when their lips are moving still holds true. But when they grab national TV time to tell you that you must fight World War III, then you better know its true. From Gulf of Tonkin to Maiden Square, the song remains the same. The Killer D’s are lying.
Thank You Norman
Re “I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”
I wonder if Harris, in her closing speech, will find it convenient to address the “other” genocide of “austerity” economics perpetrated on the global population for the last 40+ years since the hideous two-some of Reagan/Thatcher unleashed nihilist neo-liberalism on the world.
Or the one million Americans, mostly with grey hair, who have died from the Democrats Covid policy, which can be summed up in two statements. One by the Killer D flagship, the NYT, who said ‘the cure can not be worse than the disease’. The other by the author of America’s Covid policy, which is “if you don’t test, and if you don’t report on it, then the virus just goes away and their is no pandemic.”
One million dead, and the it is clearly because it is inconvenient to talk about it during this ‘economic crisis’.
people in power can act this way by giving the oppressed names. In the field of domestic violence/ power and control it is called psychiatric abuse. In this context it is institutional abuse and genocide/crimes against humanity. Hypocracy writ large.
Just how much lower can the US, and its enslaved vassal states in the West, sink? At what point will they drop the thin facade and just call out their bloodthirsty intentions openly?
Do they even understand the concept of evil, or that they embody it?
August 6, 1945.
The Facade ‘drops’ …. … on Hiroshima.
What a disgusting spectacle is the US and the rest of the West. Scapegoating and mass murdering innocents in pursuit of a group of deranged billionaires’ pipe dream of global dominance. Israel is just a continuation of their sick perverted agenda. It’s always the indigenous whose land they covet that pay the ultimate price.
Those in the audience at the DNC convention will no doubt claim they didn’t know. They know. They don’t care. They will care when the world has its say. Because the world will not forget. People outside the deluded West have long memories of how they’ve been treated by the imperial machine. Karma is coming.
Lois, why are you so vague and unwilling to be more precise about who the perpetrators are in all this carnage? You really do know who they are more precisely than just “The US,” or “the rest of the world,” or “they.” Or am I wrong?
“A group of deranged billionaires” isn’t vague, just non-specific.
Go to any well-regarded source of financial information for the list.
The wikipedia article “The World’s Billionaires” is a good place to start.
Apparently there are fewer than 3000 billionaires.
This narrows it down to about three one-hundred thousandths of a per cent of
the global population
History will still always remember him as Genocide Joe.
And lets not forget that this is not Genocide Joe’s first genocide. Genocide Joe was always a supporter of the Genocide in Yemen, which killed some 750,000 people. At this point, one could easily list …. Genocide Joe’s First Yemen Genocide, Genocide Joe’s Gaza Genocide, and now Genocide Joe’s Second Yemen Genocide, as he bombs the ports and international airports through which any aid can flow.
Of course, the millions dead from the Genocide Democrats Iraq Wars do not count, for some unknown reason. Nor does the Democrat’s Vietnam Genocide from Genocide Joe’s early days in politics.
And Genocide Kam promises Four More Year!!!!!
…with World War III promising to drown out any claims of these ‘minor’ genocides that preceded it.
Exactly!
Seems the current Dem party faithful are D for in denial. I guess few remain who have any experience of the party prior to the late ’70s when it was still New Deal. Before the neolibs staged an unfriendly take-over. Biden has a picture of FDR in his office, but actions speak louder than icons. That these neolib Ds support corporate economics, trickle up, deregulation, etc. is totally opposite the New Deal. Biden did a few things pro working class, but without effective constraints on the econ system they mean nothing. Way more indicative are the corporate donations to, really purchase of, the D party.
Then add Biden’s neocon State Dept. I’ve asked D apologists if they are fine with Dick Cheney’s PNAC trainees. i think they think I’m making that up and they’re not going to check, either. The truth would be too uncomfortable. More D for denial.
Note, though, that Biden referred to “suffering of the Palestinian people.” An acknowledgement that 1.) there IS a Palestinian people and 2.) they ARE suffering and should have “humanitarian heath and food assistance.” In other words, an admission that the protesters have been right all along. Let the fawning MSM report that truth!
It’s Day 2, 8.20.24, “in Chicago’s United Center,” of the Devils’ Convention, HQ’s of “Power” centralized & concentrated, for all the common, Democratic, sheeple to hail, “We love Joey.”
Tonight, Day 2, the “Devil” himself fka the Commander-N-$peech aka the Assassin-N-Chief, best known as the Community Organizer who vowed to sow peace; AND, gifted DJTrump Seven (7) WARS plus 44’s 3-D Strategy, “Deception. Destruction. Death.” No doubt, hailing “the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president” “Buh-bye, Joey!!!” “ The bird tweets. the owl says, WHO?”
IMO, come, November, 2024, Biden-Harris will “gift” Trump-Vance the USG/NATO v. Russia war in Ukraine & the USG/I$rael v. Palestine, genocide, on the Gaza Strip, plus (+) BIDENOMICS, “bigly!!!” famine, homelessness, poverty, racism, climate crisis, wars, corrupted corporations, a corrupted MSMedia, TV & Press, born outta a corrupted non-democratic, DNC Election 202; Coming Soon, the 2024 “$election” process aka “the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president’s” Vice President to take the reigns. Comma La’s Cabal! It’s f/F.U.B.A.R.
Orwell would have understood; AND, Aldous Huxley, brings it, “maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.”
It’s beyond chilling! “I lean closer to the fire, but, I’m cold.” Paul Simon, “Acts of Kindness.”
TY, Norman Solomon, CN. “Keep It Lit.”
Our wars are for peace and our permanent war society is permanently for peace doing it. The Minsk accords were to prepare for wars to bring peace by war. Our war in Iraq was due to the imminent threat of peace without war. The strategic logic of war is being threatened so we meed permanent war to keep peace profitable. The old world of war as protection now is the threat to human civilization by the logic of world dominance..
I wouldn’t give two cents for Joe Biden’s chances of going to heaven when he dies.
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” — Jesus, the Gospel of Luke, 18:25
It becomes an interesting philosophical debate. Is Genocide Joe banned from Heaven because he is rich? Or is he banned from heaven because of all the things he did to become rich as a loyal servant of Wall Street? I do get the distinct impression that Jesus would smile at the notion of “property is theft.”, so I suspect that if you tried to ask the question “Is Joe Biden not in heaven because he was rich, or because of all the things he did to become rich?” …. Jesus would just smile and answer “Yes.”
You should probably give those two cents to a beggar anyways. I’m not sure if $0.02 counts as ‘rich’ these days, but its best not to take any chances with the Killer D’s chanting about Four More Years of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse.
Here’s a petition to excommunicate Joe Biden: hxxps://www.change.org/p/excommunicate-president-joe-biden-bf979783-ac08-4576-a53f-c786ea23dc9c
Perhaps you’d care to sign it?
Biden’s guile is also evident in Ukraine. The current Russia situation the result of the Biden-led West deciding to intervene in domestic Ukraine political struggle on the side of the anti-Russia faction, supporting a bloody coup that overthrew a democratically elected, friendly to Russia, President, Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. See The Guardian (UK) for daily coup reporting. Note especially a telephone call from Vice President Biden to Yanukovych: As Yanukovych faced coup violence, “The White House said Joe Biden, the vice-president, spoke to Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday by telephone and warned him that the US was preparing to sanction officials responsible for the violence.” See hxxps://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/ukraine-dead-protesters-police.
Thank you
I don’t know how these people can live with themselves! And, the money they are spending on this ostentatious farce makes me sick…
Biden along with Netanyahu should be charged with genocide, murdering women & children. This is a very sick administration.
He and his entire administration should be charged under 18 U.S. Code § 1091, the US law that incorporates the Genocide Convention. Let’s find a way to charge all of them. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives.
What sort of Sewer have we fallen into ?
Being the major sponsor of the Mass slaughter of defenseless people who have been caged in a open air prison for generations by our policies.Then support the claim of “the right of self defence” to participate in genocide upon these prisoners when they object.
This contravenes all laws of moral behaviour which must rank historically as one of our darkest moments.
Futher by trying to hide behind your finger and claim the role of peacemaker to cover your evil ness is of unparalleled hypocrisy.
It seems our leaders live in a alternative Universe as they lead us all into the wilderness.
Projecting as always, Biden screams that Trump lies, while most everything Biden says is a lie. Biden told his repetitious lie about the ‘fine people hoax,’ and other misquotes and lies about things Trump has not said. He lied about his record as President. That Ukraine is ‘free’ while it is losing catastrophically and close to a million Ukrainians are dead and wounded And for no single good reason in a war that Biden himself provoked Russia into.
This from the single worst U.S. President in history. A common thief who sold out our country for tens of millions of dollars in bribes from foreign interests. Even his own party can’t stand him anymore. Pelosi and the DNC have fed Biden to the wolves. Even the corrupt DOJ is finally prosecuting Biden’s crack addict son for tax evasion though it still looks the other way on his failure to register as a foreign agent. A foreign agent is all Hunter Biden is.
Joe Biden thinks the rest of us are just as dumb as he is. But the worm has turned.
Well said! Free Palestine!
I cannot cheer for Biden. He is guilty of genocide as is Blinken and Garland and all the rest. Listen to Illan Pape tell his host that Israel has always been a genocidal nation and will continue till there are no Palestinians left. Nothing is new. Americans do’t care and neither does Biden or Harris. Imhoff is a big supporter of AIPAC so nothing will change.I cannot bear the lies any longer.
@florence brown:
as to genocidal nations: did not the first europeans
who came to north america commit genocide, too?
then came slavery, wars in korea, vietnam, “wars on
drugs”, “wars on terror”, “wars to end all wars” …
CONstantly costing countless millions of human lives.
a habit that seems very hard, if not impossible to break.
while all warmongers say: “peace does not pay!”
i find ilan pappe an excellent historian, by the way.
The author is a man of peace; but there are precious few of them. Most people, like the people cheering and carrying on in the convention last night, are abstractly for peace, but not if it costs them anything. As the great Dan Berrigan said:
“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans — that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise.
‘Of course, let us have the peace,’ we cry, ‘but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.’ And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs — at all costs — our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost — because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace.
There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war — at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”
Very interesting perspective. The real motivation behind complacency. Well put.
Thank you for commenting with Dan Berrigan’s words. I was born and brought up as Catholic as you can get, but liberated myself years ago. The day the Berrigan brothers are canonized is the day I return to the Church. Fat chance.
Beinart: ““I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”
And that is what makes Biden’s charade so dismaying. If someone in this country slaughtered 15,000 puppies, the outrage would be endless. 15,000 (brown) children, apparently not so much.
Just remember that the cretins at the convention weren’t cheering for Biden, they were cheering for their own re-election to their lucrative positions of power that they hold by revving up the faithful Democratic supporters who don’t understand that the Democratic establishment cares no more about them than it does about Biden or the Palestinians suffering genocide at his hands. This farce will continue for days now with even less relevance than the reverential coverage given to it by the oh-so-cooperative mass media who do their best to pass it off as ‘news’.