Biden has done more to undermine the US empire in the last 8 months than Trump did in 4 years. Biden is exposing the contradictions of US empire in a way that Trump could never.
If Trump was president, then the mainstream narrative would be that the genocide in Gaza was simply because of Trump and Bibi’s leadership. And you know what? Given how past presidents were able to rein in Israel when polite society started sympathizing with Palestinians, it would be believable. Instead, we get to see front and center, how a man that’s been at the top echelons of us foreign policy for decades approves and supports genocide. This is the establishment’s genocidal war.
In other words, Trump is perceived as an aberration, even when hes just continuing the same US foreign policy that weve been doing for decades. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is still framed as entirely Trump’s decision, even though he was just enacting a policy that Biden voted for in the 90s. And of course Biden did nothing to reverse that move, or even try to extract concessions to move peace talks forward.
Biden is damaging the “international rules-based order” in a way that would make Dick Cheney blush. Bush at least tried to put a veneer of international law on the criminal invasion of Iraq. But it appears the US and Israel are ready to burn the UN to the ground in order to carry out this genocide. Trump would be doing the same exact thing, except he would also serve as a scape goat for the liberal order (just get trump out of office, and we can go back to rule-following)
Don’t get me wrong, they’re both excellent accelerationist candidates. The world is watching two senile, hateful, egotistical vile men fight for control of the empire as the world burns.
The shine job they did on Biden while he was VP in the Obama years really weathered strong. All that “goofy grampa” shit they wrapped him in, and published all over the place, really solidified Biden as America’s Grandad, to the point that some people are still looking at him in the same way you might look at your cooky 80+ year old pops at the family picnic. They gave him this aura of stateliness, like he’s the Washington Monument come to life. He’s been through it all, seen every face of America, he’s the golden boy, the old dog, the tough but fair, the heavy hand but soft heart, the elected official equivalent of a mid-90s Ford Ranger, classic like coca-cola, a cool Budweiser on a hot summer night, Fireflies on the Forth of July, you know all that paper thin Americana draped over the face of death.
This is what makes him so effective, and what gives everyone the license to walk beside him. No doubt in my mind, the level of resistance to the genocide in Gaza would be magnified ten times if Trump was in power now, making all the same moves as Biden is now. It’s because libs view Trump as “Fascism Manifest”. He is the doomsayer, a harbinger of the Apocalypse, and a “threat to democracy”, whatever that means to them. His aura is toxic, and liberal progressives wouldn’t be seen collaborating with him because he gives up the game too easily. He wears his class interests on his sleeve. Watching progressives line up behind a pro genocide Donald Trump would be far too much cognitive dissonance for the liberal progressive voters to handle. Watching them line up behind Grandpa Joe, however, well, that’s just party unity and liberal progressives hunger for party unity.
I think the American institutions are accelerationist, and anyone you get out of that system as leaders would be accelerationists. The heel sets the stage, reads the crowd, establishes clear red lines and invites the masses to cosplay as resistance fighters standing behind the Face. Once the Face takes the stage, in the afterglow of the resistance’s victory, the red lines are moved forward quietly. Without this performance, there is no acceleration to be had. Both the Face and the Heel have a vested interested in the show they put on, and they need each other to keep the show going.