W.J. Astore
And Likely Biden Will Be Running Away from His Record
Joe Biden is running for reelection, or so the major networks say, the formal announcement coming as soon as this Tuesday.
It’s been on my mind as I read Chris Hedges’s latest column in which he reminds us of Biden’s string of broken promises:
Democracies are slain with false promises and hollow platitudes. Biden told us as a candidate he would raise the minimum wage to $15 and hand out $2,000 stimulus checks. He told us his American Jobs Plan would create “millions of good jobs.” He told us he would strengthen collective bargaining and ensure universal pre-kindergarten, universal paid family and medical leave, and free community college. He promised a publicly funded option for healthcare. He promised not to drill on federal lands and to promote a “green energy revolution and environmental justice.” None of that happened.
Biden’s main appeal is simply that he’s not Donald Trump (or Ron DeSantis). He represents normalcy, if “normalcy” means dysfunction, division, and increasing levels of dystopia. He represents neither hope nor change but more of the same, and as Chris Hedges notes in his article, America can’t stand much more of that.
What’s interesting to me is the idea floated by Democrats in 2020 that Biden was willing to promise to be a one-term president, given concerns aired back then of his physical and mental decline, if such a promise would secure him the support needed to defeat Trump. That promise not to run for reelection, floated but never fixed in stone, is all but forgotten today as the DNC continues to sell the idea that Biden is perfectly healthy and superbly capable of serving as president until he’s 86 years of age.
But age is just a number nowadays, right?
A few days ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his candidacy as a Democrat. The immediate response by The New York Times was to smear him as being anti-science because he questioned the efficacy of vaccines while pointing out their risks. Basically, the NYT was angry at RFK Jr. for daring to deviate from party lines, which makes him even more intriguing to me.
Kennedy has spoken out powerfully against the permanent war state in America and the wanton wastefulness of empire, so he has my vote. Of course, the mainstream media will do its best to ignore him as well as Marianne Williamson, and when they can’t be ignored, they’ll smear them so that shuffling Joe Biden can continue in office as a figurehead, shoved along by his handlers, likely with ever decreasing dignity.
Most readers of Bracing Views, I think, are looking for true hope and change, and we know it’s not coming from the two major parties. Still, I hope readers will give candidates like RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson a long look. It sure beats swallowing a little bit and voting for Joe again.
Bracing Views 
There is a choice…..as you mentioned, RFK Jr is challenging….
https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2023/04/24/rfk-jr-takes-strong-antiwar-anti-empire-stance-in-presidential-run/
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With Joe and Victoria Nuland, there will be more WAR, DEATH & DESTRUCTION of Ukrainians and Russians as the US dances around having to FACE Russia directly instead of using Ukrainians as the US Sacrificial Lambs and Cannon Fodder.
I feel for this Ukrainian soldier who obviously is holding back tears as someone from The New York Times is questioning him.
He may as well be saying WAR IS HELL as we’ve all heard said at some Time or Another! If the US and Russia do collide we may will see the FIRES OF HELL unfold all around us?
Trump wasn’t the 1st to threaten FIRE AND FURY as he does here, but the fact that he did, is a Sign from the Earthly POWER confirming AND FURY WE ARE that Generation: https://youtu.be/8p1JIgTuKQk
This is from the last chapter of the Major Jewish Prophet in Isaiah 66;
For behold, the Lord shall come with FIRE, and like a tempest,
His chariots, to render His anger with FURY, and His rebuke with flames of FIRE.
In a VERY REAL PROBABLE SENSE, that FIRE AND FURY will most likely take this form in this MATERIAL WORLD as we can see it’s already on that PATH DAY BY DAY: https://youtu.be/7VG2aJyIFrA
Can the People not see it? It’s not seriously discussed at the Street Level as a THREAT TO OUR LIVES and the END of the Pyramid System we are trapped in!
It does take the MSM to awaken the People to be Vigilant to what’s really going on in the World larger than ourselves and our small space in it.
Eisenhower warned us and his wise advice is spurned. General-President Eisenhower was the LAST real Commander-in-Chief. He knew WAR IS HELL, and that’s why after 8 Years as President, and knowing how the System works, WARNED Society about an expanding Military-Industrial-Educational Complex.
In his 1st Year as President, the US DoD Budget was $60 BILLION a Year and now it consumes more Tax Dollars that are Budgeted for Civilian NEEDS.
THAT US MIC is making a KILLING off the Ukraine WAR, more than anyone!!! Business is BOOMing! Profits galore for US Oligarchs.
The American People don’t seem to care, oblivious to the FIRE AND FURY building up out of Public View ready to crash on everyone’s heads as spoken by Trump in POWER and written by Isaiah some 2600 years ago.
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Joe Biden – 80 years old
Donald Trump – 76 years old
Robert Kennedy Jr. – 69 years old
Marianne Williamson – 70 years old
Age is just a number. But some fresh ideas from a younger generation would be nice. This might be the first election I sit out. I mean what is the point?
And yes I have read Kennedy’s and Williamson’s websites. Lots of ideas, but without a fundamental change in Congress (never mind our dysfunctional and bought and paid for SCOTUS) none of them matter. The POTUS can only do so much, regardless of how people keep trying to treat them like kings (maybe one day we’ll get a queen of our very own?).
To even begin to fix the systemic problems we would need to flush out most of the current stock. Then maybe we could get rid of gerrymandering, institute term limits, ban dark money, rein in lobbyists, amongst a myriad of other reforms that are needed.
I’ve grown out of the belief that one person can do much to change the system, and I am all out of hope. Short of a nation wide complete shutdown by the people, where we literally say no more and demand reform or nothing runs, I really don’t see how things get better. Since we can’t seem to even agree on basic rights or acknowledge that people getting gunned down on a pretty regular fucking basis might be a bit of a problem, I don’t really see any unity around fixing the mess in Washington happening.
My prediction for 2024: The political parties will do their damnedest to make sure their preferred candidates get all the attention, the people will once again divide themselves up in support of some charlatan promising them the moon (or Mars!), the rich will get richer, and the natural world around us will continue to deteriorate. We’ll get jingoism about freedom, liberty, and a bunch of other crap that looks good on a yard sign. We’ll no doubt hear about voter fraud and stolen elections, have lots of protests and counter protests, and with them violence. What we won’t get is a substantial debate from either party, any news beyond the daily horse race from the media, or a second to digest any of it in the 24/7 world of social media.
Let the games begin.
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I relate to your feelings of resignation and despair, JAV, but as I start my 80 year, there are Days I feel the Way you describe, and then there are other Days when I feel everything Good is Possible! I can’t give up the hope Better Days are still Ahead of me, no matter what The World opts for our Common Future!
I haven’t seen the movie that was the rage winning most Oscars this year, but the Name of it, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is prescient and really encapsulates in the letter, the Spirit of OUR TIMES, and the People are not strengthened to deal with it as it is TODAY, not as we wish it to be.
You say, “Short of a nation wide complete shutdown by the people, where we literally say no more and demand reform or nothing runs,”
In my view and understanding, that’s how it is already. The People have physiologically severed themselves as if they were an Island from the well being of the Collective, so nothing works and divisions expand!
Notwithstanding that, I agree with you, and unless Corporate MSM, now acting like a 5th Horseman of the Apocalypse, changes values and priorities giving the Public the real reasons why they should take to the streets to PEACEFULLY Protest, it will never happen.
As it is, there will always be Agents Provocateur moving through the crowd attempting to hijack a PEACEFUL Protest, easily turning it into mindless mob madness and chaos. January 6 is the recent example.
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Another January 6th on steroids is a major concern. Or another Charlottesville. The rhetoric is getting ramped up, and I especially think a certain candidate is only going to increase it as things move forward. The 2020 election really split my little town, and the effects still linger. I fear what another round will do. Which is really fucking stupid because everyone is in the same sinking boat, scooping water out as quickly as we can. But instead of working together we are arguing over who’s bucket is more American.
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I fully intend to not support either political party in the general election but I hate Biden enough to vote against him in the primaries out of spite.
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Take-it-or-Take-it “Choices”
(All Sizes Fit One)
Nothing off the table
Something on the floor
Metaphor and fable
Adding up to war
Bomber John and Lindsey
Graham and McCain
War for them is whimsy
Others get the pain
So at least in theory
Goes the latest “plan”
Two, at least, are leery:
Russia and Iran
China, too, ain’t buying
What we’ve got to sell:
More bad debt and crying
On the road to Hell
Waffle Waitress Nikki
Threatens the UN:
“We will have our quickie!
Any where or when!”
Deadbeat country failing
Fighting just to lose
“Sick” or “ill” or “ailing”:
“Options” we can “choose”
“Alternate” provisions
“On the table” sit:
All scream, “More divisions!”
Same old sorry shit.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2018
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“During the intervals between elections the political existence of the citizenry is relegated to a shadow citizenship of virtual participation. Instead of participating in power, the virtual citizen is invited to have ‘opinions’: measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them.” — Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
The Circus that Wouldn’t Leave Town
From time to time, the circus once arrived,
Quadrennial in its appointed rounds.
Yet somehow it has artfully contrived
To never leave — bombarding us with sounds
And sights so lurid and insistent that
Whatever tripe The Candidate expounds
Begins to clog the arteries with fat,
Inducing aneurisms in the soul
Through endless touting of a puerile spat.
Consultants endlessly conduct a poll
Which tells us what they wish for us to hear:
That folks like us will play our scripted role.
Commercial ads have made that crystal clear.
If only fright were all we had to fear
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2012
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Sheldon Wolin sure was right about that.
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There is no True Democracy in this world yet, as defined in Webster’s Dictionary, not the abbreviated online definition in the merged Merrium-Webster Website.
The Book defines “Democracy” by these words, ideas and images.
A THEORY of governance which, in it’s purest form, holds that the State should be controlled by ALL THE PEOPLE, each sharing EQUALLY in PRIVILEGES, DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES, and EACH PARTICIPATING in PERSON in the government, as in the CITY-STATES of ancient Greece.
IN practice, CONTROL is vested in elective officers as Representatives who may be upheld or removed by THE PEOPLE.
A government so conducted; a state so governed; the mass of the people.
POLITICAL, LEGAL, or SOCIAL EQUALITY
We have none of that in reality, as the people are slowly waking up from a deep sleep to understand we have a Plutocracy/Oligarchy Pyramid system, and only an delusional, pseudo Democracy in the False American Dream.
The in practice Control is not even in the hands of the elected Representatives.
As soon as a Representative is elected for only 2 years, the priority is to find supporters with MONEY to finance re-election. He who pays the piper calls the Tune!
The mass of the poor without money cannot influence the Representatives to change the Plutocracy where legislation is passed to ensure the rich get richer and the poor poorer.
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Zbigniew Brzezinski served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. Brzezinski was the primary organizer of The Trilateral Commission.
Obviously, he has been an influence on the Powers behind the Throne of the Presidents for a very long time.
It was he who wrote in his 1997 book, ‘The Grand Chessboard American Primacy and its Geo-strategic Imperatives’
“It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire”
The flip side of that line is this, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, the US automatically extends and consolidates it’s empire”
That’s the Policy the US has followed since Brzezinski, leading to the inevitably of the Current Ukraine WAR where both sides say it’s an EXISTENTIAL THREAT!
The CIA was so influenced by Brzezinski, they are hosting online for FREE in pdf,
‘The Grand Chessboard
American Primacy and its Geo-strategic Imperatives’
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Click to access BD4CE651B07CCB8CB069F9999F0EADEE_Zbigniew_Brzezinski_-_The_Grand_ChessBoard.pdf
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Without the Internet, most probably, I never would have known this US History.
‘The Presidential Campaign of Convict 9653’
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918.
The act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson. The law made it illegal for a U.S. citizen to “wilfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government” or to discourage compliance with the draft or voluntary enlistment into the military.
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
https://portside.org/2023-04-28/presidential-campaign-convict-9653
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