Delirium, dementia, absurdity

In terms of social and political consequences, Joe Biden’s presidency will be associated primarily with a change in the country’s image and value system, with the polarization and radicalization of society, and with an inconsistent and destructive foreign policy. However, in personal, human terms, the attitude towards him should not be unequivocally condemnatory. As a political leader, he embodies and reflects his time, situation in the country, and America’s place and role in the world.

From dawn to dusk

America’s 46th president was born to a middle-class Catholic family in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Success in education was not distinguished, but in his youth showed interest in politics. At the age of 28, Biden entered big politics. He achieved victory over the Republican rival in the Senate elections, essentially without financial resources, sponsors, and lobbyists, relying on the support of family and like-minded people.

The remarkable essayist Janet Malcolm recalled Biden’s former resourcefulness, wit, and charm during Senate hearings. He knew how to build relationships with dissenters and opponents, which was the norm for successful work in political institutions during his youth.

Biden was a favorite in his home districts, with voters voting for him for decades. Now, however, the countrymen have little sympathy for him. I live in these parts most of the year, and I am much more likely to meet fervent Trump supporters here, for whom Biden, along with Obama, has become the embodiment of everything they hate.

You can’t count on compassion and empathy in the current political struggle, especially since the Biden administration has fully utilized its resources against its opponents. Still, with a biblical view – compassion above truth and justice, one can see Joe Biden’s fate as a Shakespearean tragedy.

The deaths of his wife, infant daughter, and eldest son, the alcoholism and drug addiction of Hunter, daughter Ashley, and daughter-in-law, Bo’s widow, Hallie, who entered into scandalous intimate relationships with Hunter, their drug intoxication in front of Biden’s grandchildren…. Family members and staff often saw Biden in despair, in tears over family hardships.

In addition to family problems, Biden has many grudges against Obama, who preferred Hillary Clinton in the election; Biden was sure he had more merit and a better chance of winning. His closest associate and friend, Nancy Pelosi, was one of the instigators of the partisan pressure to remove Biden from the presidential race. Kamala Harris, in whom Biden saw no use as his aide, who has not proven herself and is not ready for the mission assigned to her, prefers not to mention Biden’s name in her company. And the New York Times, yesterday’s unqualified ally, writes: “To win, Harris must cut ties with Biden on policy.” That said, while it’s obvious that Harris has nothing but a sexy smile and designer suits, compared to her , Hillary Clinton is a titan of big policy, but due to party commitments, Biden has to support Harris.

One cannot help but remember King Lear, who, having abdicated the throne, expected to be honored and respected but turned out to be needed and despised: “You should not have grown old until you are wise”; “In this time, the blind are led by the mad.”

In today’s America, many millions of people and their families suffer from Alzheimer’s, dementia, drug and alcohol addiction. Few like Kissinger retain their clarity of thought and adequate worldview into old age. However, even youth is no guarantee against dementia; the progressive team in Congress or the liberalism- and drug-addled university students are a sad example.  Biden was unlucky; his ambitions were inadequate to his genetics and medicine’s potential. He deserves sympathy, he is certainly to be pitied. But pity the country even more.

Retirement does not promise Biden a quiet and honorable life and millions for memoirs and speeches. It is possible that Hunter’s “business” in Ukraine, Romania, and China will be the subject of legal proceedings, which will not leave his father aside. Trump stated, “. Biden, I’m sure, will be punished for all his crimes.”

Historians will not forget the disastrous outcome of the war with the Taliban, Iran’s increasing role and influence in the Middle East, the aimless, failed policies in the Russian-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian wars, the rapprochement of U.S. strategic adversaries China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, open borders, and the use of immigration and legislation for political purposes.

Before the upcoming election, Biden is trying to fast-track citizenship and voting rights for millions of immigrants. The number of undocumented immigrants has dropped significantly in recent months to ease criticism of Democrat policies, but it proves that the opportunity has always existed but has not been used to change the demographics of the country and increase the pro-Democratic electorate.

Perhaps some of the Obama-Biden legacy can be corrected in the future, but the changes in the country’s cultural and demographic makeup, the nature of political relations, the value system,  and worldviews are irreversible.

He was chosen and rejected by the time

President Biden’s life and fate are closely linked to the changing values and paradigms of Western democracy, both at the early stages of his career and when he became a prominent politician. He was not a subversion of the foundations; he sensed the spirit of the times and the winds of change. Obama, whom his opponents perceived as a radical, chose Biden to soften the perception of his intentions and policies.

Obama, realizing that he had a special responsibility to alleviate age-old racial problems, began not by escalating relations but by prudently calling for the strengthening of black families, where 70% of children do not live with their biological fathers, spoke of the need to take learning and work seriously. But he soon realized he would lose the support of the most active part of his base that way, so he changed rhetoric and policy. Woke ideology, “Critical Racial Theory,” progressivism, the division between the privileged and the discriminated, and “Black Lives Matter” sentiments became the dominant factors shaping the public atmosphere. Biden was held hostage to these circumstances.

In such conditions, it was impossible for Biden to act as a conciliator  and stabilize and harmonize social relations. The country was already severely polarized, destructive forces dominated over common sense, and the America of the founding fathers was retreating on all fronts. Education, culture, mainstream media, and social media became propagandists and promoters of aggressive liberal ideology.

New generations coming through schools and universities saw the country and the world as liberal utopias and demanded radical change. Janet Malcolm described the degradation of education as early as 1997: “The impact of American education takes place in the democratized debate classroom. Students listen to idiotic judgments as if they were brilliant.” Classical education and critical thinking have given way to social demagoguery, knowledge of the real world –  to unfulfilled fantasies.

It’s hard to say whether Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt , or Franklin Roosevelt could have turned the tide, but Biden certainly couldn’t even if he wanted to. Donald Trump’s appearance to the country and the world left him no choice; like the rest of the Democratic Party nomenclature, Biden went with the flow.

Biden’s dependence on the left wing of the Democratic Party, on progressives, on Obama appointees is obvious, but at the same time he was not and could not be free from the real masters of life – those who control the economy and finance. Protests and rallies, clashes with the police are front-page news, prime-time reporting, but all of this is secondary to the conditions for maintaining or changing power.

Capitalism and the market have successfully walked the planet for more than three centuries, defeated socialism, established global dominance and control, and yet managed to secure the interests not only of the elite but also of the growing middle class. This has changed radically in recent decades. Polls show that most citizens think they are living worse than previous generations. In G7 countries only 20% of the population think that they will live better in 5 years. Gone are the days when a factory worker, a teacher, or an office worker could feed a family of four, buy a decent home and car, provide for their children’s education,  and not be afraid of a medical bill.

Whatever the government statistics say about the growth of the economy, it is obvious that over the last quarter of a century prices have increased 3-4 times. Wage growth, savings, and retirement funds are being devalued by inflation. In 1980, global financial inflation was 12 trillion, now about 400 trillion. (Center Rockefeller International). The government is printing empty money, the next generations have to pay for it.

Record profits are generated by financial speculation, monopolization, market control, lobbying, and political donations, not by meeting urgent public needs. The number of billionaires and their wealth grow with crises, wars, pandemics, unemployment, and government changes. The system is so strong that Chomsky, Sanders,  and the remnants of labor unions and the labor movement do not threaten it. And for public consumption, the system has its arguments.

The modern organization of economics and finance is so complex that the average person, driven by ignorance and envy, cannot make sense of it and does not understand his happiness. If this is true, then universal suffrage and other rights should be abolished without hypocrisy and legends, but it is not possible to say this frankly yet. The elite have special talents, work hard, and get what they deserve; everyone has equal rights; follow the example of the winners if you can. The geniuses who made unrivaled contributions to the progress and welfare of mankind, from the inventors of the wheel and the lever , Faraday to Einstein, lived on modest wages with no special privileges.

At the disposal of the masters of life and their servants is a crushing argument for all time: “You want socialism?! Are you encroaching on sacred private property?!”. If one has to invoke Stalin and Mao in one’s defense, the debate, whether in Congress or in the academy, is pointless and dangerous for the opponent. Most importantly, government and politics are inextricably linked to private capital, and any government, small or large, primarily concerned with self-preservation cannot loosen that link.

The electoral system is a billion-dollar expense, and every politician can only circumvent dependence on his creditors. The decisive factor in Biden’s capitulation was the position of donors. In the current climate, the super-rich are more generous in helping Democrats than Republicans. There is nothing strange about this: the Republicans support their interests anyway, so they have to pay more to the Democrats.

The weaker the government and its leaders and institutions, the more dependent they are on the corporate-financial oligarchy. The chaos and absurdity of the country’s current situation, as well as the leaders’ weakness and dependence, create favorable conditions for diverting public attention from key socio-economic problems. That is why both Biden’s arrival and departure and Harris’s nomination are preferable for the kings of the universe than victory by unruly and unpredictable Trump.

The people and the leaders are united

People with a creative imagination can see an imaginative connection between the president’s degradation and the destructive social and moral processes sweeping society. Pathologized, deviant, inadequate behavior manifests itself in a variety of spheres and forms: social exasperation, culture wars, aggression, crime, mass shootings, family disintegration, sexual anomalies, and decreased trust in institutions, politicians, and religion…

One of the most disturbing indicators of the state of society is the rise and normalization of drug addiction, which kills more than one hundred thousand Americans a year, and despite record efforts and costs, the number of drug and alcohol addicts is growing in all social groups, from the slums in the downtowns to the nationally known celebrities.

How do we combat this epidemic? Liberal ideology and politics provide the answer: make drugs legal and more accessible, remove the social stigma, look at the addict as a victim of social conditions, remove the question of personal responsibility, and continue down this path regardless of its perniciousness.

The same approach applies to all forms of lifestyle and social norms. Not long ago, one could see a reminder in the subway: “The quality of urban transportation is the quality of life.” The quality of transport is not only the strict schedule but also the behavior of passengers, observance of rules, cleanliness, and many other things that testify to social relations’ cultural and moral level.

The subways in New York cannot be compared to those in Moscow or even to the more modest ones in London, Paris, and Washington. Under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the situation has improved, the subway has become more reliable and safer. But the rule of the Democrats always turned out to be a disaster for urban transportation – the growth of crime, hooliganism, vandalism, the impotence of the police, whose hands are tied by the courts, prosecutors, mass protests. Trains and platforms filled with homeless people, people with severe mental disorders, beggars, whose ranks were swelled by immigrants with children… When I came to New York 30 years ago, there was English in the transport, and there were some common norms of behavior; now, there is multicultural, global multilingualism, and everyone has their own rights and ideas, and no one is an example.

It is hard to imagine what measures can lead society out of chaos, polarization, and the influence of populist demagogy. If there were a politician with high moral principles and sound judgment, ready not to lie, not to promise the impossible, he would have little chance. The new generations, raised on utopian expectations, on PR and propaganda rhetoric, on the search for the enemies of freedom and democracy, live by passions and illusions. The atmosphere at party conventions, rallies, and political demonstrations differs little from a hip-hop concert with an audience in alcoholic and drug-induced euphoria.

Party-propagandist attitudes are reorganized according to the time. In the midst of election battles and raging passions, the New York Times published an article titled “You’re as Smart as Your Emotions” by columnist David Brooks, who has the status of an intellectual and centrist. He was a conservative in the old days, but nowadays, the center doesn’t last, and he’s in the mainstream of liberals. Brooks writes that emotional impact is stronger than intellectual impact: “you have to be a great emotional athlete to make great decisions in life.”

No argument, emotions are a powerful driving force. Freud created a new religion based on the recognition of the primacy of the subconscious, irrational motives, and driving forces that determine thought and behavior. Lacan and Foucault supplemented psychoanalysis with notions of power, freedom, desire, and the madness of leaders and mobs. Ayn Rand, the most famous American philosopher, frankly recognized that only the creative elite is able to think rationally and objectively; ordinary citizens do not have such an opportunity and hardly deserve the right to participate in elections. But the ideological façade, political rhetoric, and narrative were based on the fact that the masses cared about the truth, that people were hungry for truth and honest conversation.

Under monarchical and authoritarian rule, the distribution of roles is obvious: defining and understanding interests, goals, and ways to achieve them in the ruling circle. The opinions and needs of the disenfranchised can be of little concern, and the punitive system serves more effectively than persuasion.

Democracy requires taking into account the mood of the masses, and a successful politician must have the tools to influence these moods. Rationalists and pragmatists of the new time, Churchill, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan, used emotional influence with talent. Revolutionaries, radicals, extremists, Nazis, racists, and anti-Semites have been no less successful in using passionarity, pathos, and passion. Both Trump and Harris are clearly refusing rational dialog and fighting in the field of emotions, and no experts and intellectuals will turn them off this path. Without reading the classics or David Brooks, they have realized that this path is more effective in the struggle for power in today’s America.

The hatred, violence, and aggression of the pogrom protests in Western Europe, the civil division in America, international terrorism, the rise of nationalism, and the aggravation of ethnic conflicts are convincing evidence of where reliance on emotion, spectacle, and demagoguery instead of reason and meaning leads.

Emotions are not only love, sympathy, and empathy but also hatred, anger, aggression, fear, jealousy, and dislike – the list of emotions is long, and most of them are negative. Trouble for the society, where emotions rule politics, economy, and management. The great Spinoza wrote in his treatise “Ethics of the Origin and Nature of Emotions”:  “The passion of hatred, anger, envy and the like comes from the necessity and essence of nature.” The Bible warns, “From childhood, the human heart is disposed to evil.” (Genesis 8:21).

Only sober reason or firm authority can keep emotions under control. Since the time of Socrates, humanists and enlighteners have realized that democracy can exist and resist the power of tyrants or feral mobs only by relying on conscious, rational citizens who are able and willing to abide by the law and the social contract. The antithesis of democracy—its perverted form of ochlocracy, the power of the rabble—is even more pernicious than autocratic rule.