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      in World Politics

      Facial Recognition and the Convenience of Injustice

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      Some people are concerned that the latest generation of powerful technology tools now being developed and deployed may undermine important features of civilized societies and human life itself. Notably, Elon Musk is so worried about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI) that he invested in accelerating its development.

      Musk has voiced his concern while simultaneously expressing the hope that if good, stable and responsible people such as Elon himself develop AI before the evil people out there get their hands on it, his company SpaceX will succeed in moving the human race to Mars before AI’s quest to enslave humanity is complete. Fearing people may not make it to Mars in time, Musk launched Neuralink, a company that promises to turn people into cyborgs. Its technology, implanted in people’s brains, will presumably put a transformed race on the same level as AI and therefore allow it to resist AI’s conquistadors.

      Although this story of the race to the future by opposing forces of good and evil may sound like the plot of a sci-fi comic book, Musk has on various occasions said things that actually do resemble that scenario. In the meantime, AI is being put to use in numerous domains, theoretically with the idea of solving specific problems but, more realistically, according to the time-honored laws of consumer society as a response to the perennial pursuit of convenience.

      In the quest for convenience, one of the tasks people have assigned to AI is facial recognition. Apparently, it has now become very good at using the image of a face to identify individuals. It may even perform better than Lady Gaga in the knotty problem of distinguishing Isla Fisher from Amy Adams.

      Facial Recognition Technology and the Future of Policing

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      Law enforcement in the US has demonstrated its interest in the added productivity facial recognition promises. Like everyone else, the police like to know who they are talking to as well as who they should go out and arrest. The problem is that they sometimes arrest and incarcerate people that AI’s facial recognition has mistakenly identified. The accuracy of the existing tools diminishes radically with non-Caucasian faces. That means more wrongful arrests and indictments for black suspects.

      The New York Times makes a timid attempt to delve into this ethical issue in an article that bears the somewhat tendentious title, “A Case for Facial Recognition.” The article sums up the case in the following terms: “The balancing act that Detroit and other U.S. cities have struggled with is whether and how to use facial recognition technology that many law enforcement officials say is critical for ensuring public safety, but that tends to have few accuracy requirements and is prone to misuse.”

      Here is today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Critical (for):

      A deliberately imprecise term used to evaluate the importance of an act that exists on a sliding scale between absolutely essential and probably useful, making it a convenient way of creating the belief that something is more important than it really is.

      Contextual Note

      The adjective “critical” derives from the Latin word “criticus” and relates to the idea of “crisis.” It came into the English language in the mid-16th century with the meaning “relating to the crisis of a disease.” When The Times article tells us that “many law enforcement officers” say facial recognition “is critical for ensuring public safety,” we need to realize that those officers are not referring to a crisis but to their own convenience. Facial recognition can, of course, produce a crisis when it misidentifies a suspect. But the crisis is for the suspect, not for the police.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The expression “critical for” has come to signify “really important in my view,” a very subjective appreciation in contrast to the far more factual sounding “crucial,” which comes from the idea of the “crux” or the core of a problem. The article underlines this question of subjectivity when it reports that a black officer it quotes “still believed that, with oversight, law enforcement would be better off using facial recognition software than not.” “Better off” is not quite the same thing as “critical.”

      But let’s take a closer look at the claim that “law enforcement would be better off.” How do we parse the subject, “law enforcement,” in this sentence? The term “law enforcement” can be an abstract noun meaning the official function of monitoring behavior in a community to ensure optimal compliance with laws. This appears in sentences such as “one of government’s responsibilities is to provide the community with the means of law enforcement.”

      But law enforcement can also refer to the police themselves, the officials who are empowered to apprehend and deliver to the judicial system those who are suspected of infringing the laws. Which one is “better off” thanks to facial recognition? In the first case, abstract law enforcement — we are speaking of the safety of the community. “Better off” would then mean more optimally and more fairly conducted. In the second it is the men and women doing the job. For them “better off” basically means improved convenience.

      So which one is the article’s author, Shira Ovide, referring to? Clearly, the following explanation indicates that for her, law enforcement refers to the police and not to the needs of the community. “That’s the position of facial recognition proponents: That the technology’s success in helping to solve cases makes up for its flaws, and that appropriate guardrails can make a difference.” It’s all about the job of “helping to solve cases.” Ovide is a technology specialist at The Times, which might explain her focus on convenience rather than the ethics of policing.

      What Ovide says is superficially true, but the same logic could be applied to slaveholding. If we admit the argument that slavery helped to boost agricultural production — which of course it did — we could point out that the boost it provides makes up for its flaws. That was how slaveholders reasoned. The crucial difference — rather than critical — lies in examining the nature and the impact of those flaws. After all, slaveowners also thought about “appropriate guardrails.” They simply called them “slave patrols.”

      This is where, for Ovide, bureaucracy comes to the rescue of the logic of convenience and reveals the underlying logic of modern law enforcement: “The new guidelines limited the Police Department’s use of facial recognition software to more serious crimes, required multiple approvals to use the software and mandated reports to a civilian oversight board on how often facial recognition software was used.”

      The article ends on a slightly ambiguous note but fails to go into any depth on the moral question and its civic consequences. It seems to endorse the idea that with the right procedures, the gain in efficiency is worth the random damage it will produce.

      Historical Note

      The above reference to slave patrols may sound exaggerated, but it is not trivial. As Chelsea Hansen at the Law Enforcement Museum points out, slave patrols were “an early form of American policing.” The strategies and organizational principles that grew out of slave patrols influenced the evolution of policing in the United States. Race has always been a major, but usually unacknowledged feature of American law enforcement culture.

      The late anthropologist David Graeber put it brutally when he noted that the criminal justice system in the US “perceives a large part of that city’s population not as citizens to be protected, but as potential targets for what can only be described as a shake-down operation designed to wring money out of the poorest and most vulnerable by any means they could.” Mass incarceration has, among other things, enabled a modern form of slave labor.

      In other words, there is a vast historical and cultural problem the US needs to solve. That is precisely what’s behind the idea formulated as “defund the police.” The slogan itself is misleading. What it really means is “rethink the police.” But asking Americans to rethink any problem appears to be beyond their capacity. It’s always easier just to point to one simple practical task, like defunding.

      The debate about face recognition in policing should not focus on the tasks of police officers and the convenience it affords them but on the relationship between law enforcement and the community. But that would ultimately require weaning the consumer culture of its addiction to the idea of convenience.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Searching for the Soul of America

      by

      The soul of America is a highly sought-after commodity these days. In their victory speeches, both President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris mentioned that they fought for the soul of America in the tightly-contested elections. Some 75 million people agreed, giving the Biden-Harris ticket the reigns for the next four years to repair and restore the soul of the nation.

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      The losing incumbent, Donald Trump, has been a singularly divisive figure in American politics over the past several years. He is a racist and a white supremacist, a xenophobe and an Islamophobe, a misogynist and a narcissist, a liar and a petulant loser. Trump repeatedly denied scientific evidence when dealing with environmental issues and the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 death toll in the US is nearing 250,000 from over 10 million cases, primarily due to the mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump administration. And yet, 8 million more people than the 62 million who voted him into office in 2016 find Trump’s actions and behavior as acceptable. A staggering 70 million Americans still feel that there is nothing wrong with the soul of the nation and chose to cast their vote for Trump.

      If we are forced to draw conclusions about that intangible entity referred to as the soul of America just from the votes people cast in the presidential contest, we can only surmise that it is split almost evenly between what Joe Biden and Donald Trump stand for. Refusing to accept that verdict, I investigated down-ballot races across the country with the hope of unearthing other clues that could shed a light in my quest to understand where and what America stands for today.

      Should Non-Citizens Be Able to Vote?

      Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia have in their constitution language to the effect that the right to vote is available only to citizens of the country. Notwithstanding that, Alabama, Florida and Colorado passed constitutional amendments to make the citizenship requirement for voting more explicit. What is interesting is not that these measures passed with an overwhelming majority, but the fact that 23% of voters in Alabama, 20% in Florida and 33% in Colorado cast their ballots against the measure.

      The 3.5 million Americans who subscribe to the idea that non-citizens should be able to vote belong to an interesting segment of the nation’s population. Perhaps they echo my thought process that it is appropriate for non-citizens to get to vote on specific issues. As non-citizens, it makes sense that they do not get to participate in the representational democratic aspects such as electing the president, governor or members of Congress. However, in keeping with the philosophy of taxation with representation, it also makes sense for them to vote in specific propositions, measures and initiatives local to their place of residence.

      Criminal Justice Reforms

      Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana, increasing the list of states that have decriminalized the schedule 1 drug to 31, including Washington, DC. Only in seven states — Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming — is the possession of marijuana fully illegal, even for medicinal purposes, although in North Carolina, it is not considered a criminal offense.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Oregon became a trailblazer, the first state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of hard drugs. Today, America’s prisons have a population of 2.3 million, where one in five behind bars is there on account of a drug offense. With the decriminalization of marijuana, America’s war on drugs, initiated by Richard Nixon and perfected by Ronald Reagan, may finally be coming to an end.

      A harsh reality of committing a felony offense is the loss of the right to vote. In the infamous presidential election of 2000, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in the state of Florida by a razor-thin margin of 537 votes. Florida, along with Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, has some of the harshest possible voting laws for people who have committed a felony offense. According to the Sentencing Project, 5.2 million people were ineligible to vote in the 2020 elections. Nearly 22%, or 1.13 million of them, are in the state of Florida. History may have been very different, and Bush may never have won the 2000 election had Florida’s laws allowed former felons who have paid their dues to the justice system and turned their lives around to vote.

      This November, California made a shift to take a more liberal view on the voting rights of those with felony convictions. Californians restored the right to vote for people on parole, removing an important obstacle in allowing former felons to become full-fledged members of society. They also rejected a proposal that sought stricter parole rules and harsher sentencing.

      Eliminating Symbols of Slavery

      Earlier in June, Mississippi retired the state flag that had incorporated a version of the Confederate battle banner in it. The people of Mississippi voted to approve a new flag with the symbol of magnolia and the words “In God We Trust,” removing one of the last vestiges of Confederacy in a state flag.

      Rhode Island voters passed a measure to strip the racially insensitive phrase “Providence Plantations” from its official name, after having failed to do so in 2010. By an overwhelming majority of 80% and an impressive majority of 68%, respectively, voters in Utah and Nebraska passed an initiative that removes references to slavery from their constitutions and suspends the permission of involuntary servitude as criminal punishment.

       And the Verdict Is

      Toning down the populist and ill-conceived war-on-drugs rhetoric and easing the reintegration of former felons into society by restoring their voting rights are small steps toward meaningful criminal justice reform. Eliminating signifiers that celebrate the Confederacy and slavery from state names and flags is more than symbolic. They open up a path to healing, rejecting the hatred that lurks in the veneration of the icons of white supremacy.

      The disappointments came from my home state of California. Here, Proposition 22 posed the question of whether app-based gig-economy workers such Uber and Lyft drivers should be treated as contractors or as employees with proper benefits. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Postmates pumped nearly $200 million dollars to avoid the responsibility of giving gig-workers employee status. Their marketing blitzkrieg recruited Mothers Against Drunk Driving to portray a dismal scenario of increased drunk-driving deaths should this proposition fail. In the end, capitalism won where people opted to have their cheap Uber and Lyft rides, even if it meant denying their drivers their fair share of benefits.

      More poignantly, California missed its chance to reinstate affirmative action, which it ended in 1996 without giving adequate time for that initiative to have a meaningful impact. Sadly, more than 56% of voters failed to appreciate that compensating for centuries of advantages enjoyed by whites and other privileged classes would not only require counterinitiatives like affirmative action, but that they need to be given time so that African Americans and other disadvantaged minorities have a true shot at social equity.

      Counterbalancing my disappointments stemming from the 70 million who are still willing to embrace Donald Trump and Californians rejecting affirmative action, I found many down-ballot measures, from Mississippi to Utah, from Arizona to New Jersey, pointing to a subtle shift in the right direction. That gives me a glimmer of hope that the soul of America may not be so dark as to be beyond redemption. And as they say, hope springs eternal.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Media Finds a Way to Brand AOC a Fascist

      by

      An article in Politico offers its scary take on a tweet by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that the authors claim “terrified Trumpworld.” The headline informs us that “AOC wants to cancel those who worked for Trump.” The article ends by quoting one Trump loyalist who qualifies AOC’s assault as “literally fascism.” Newsweek upped the ante on the fear factor, with this headline: “Fox News Contributor Compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Nazi Germany over ‘Trump Sycophants’ List.”

      What did this totalitarian, terrorist assault via Twitter consist of? And what dire consequences might it lead to? Here is Ocasio-Cortez’s text: “Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future.” Politico quoted a White House official who compares AOC’s request to ostracism: “I believe there is a life after this in politics for Trump officials, but the idea that a sitting member of Congress wants to purge from society and ostracize us should scare the American people.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Ostracism:

      As practiced by the ancient Greeks: the exclusion from public life those who have committed a serious offense against the community. As used by today’s politicians and media: the expression of a wish to hold the honorable people in government accountable for their participation in offensive policies, in violation of one’s civic duty to thank them for their contribution.

      Contextual Note

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet literally urged Democrats to make the effort of preserving any ephemeral material evidence of commitment by members of the Trump administration to the extreme policies the same political personalities might later seek to deny. She specifically referred to social media when she identified the nature of such evidence: “Tweets, writings, photos.” Nothing about ostracism and nothing about lists of names, as some have claimed.

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      Why should she think this is important? There are two serious answers to this question. The first is that plausible denial has become an artform for politicians, who prefer not to be reminded of positions they have taken in the past that subsequently become unpopular. Ocasio-Cortez worries that future Republican opponents of Democrats will cosmetically seek to ameliorate their image by deleting evidence on social media of their unqualified embrace of Donald Trump’s extremism.

      The second is that Ocasio-Cortez wishes to make life difficult for Republicans in future elections. She knows they will try to rebuild their party in the shadow of Trump, who will still be there to snipe at them. Trump is the prince of chaos. If, as many foresee, the party attempts a shift away from Trump’s populist wing toward its traditional neoliberal center, numerous influential Republicans who accepted to play on Trump’s team will be caught in the cross-currents.

      That will be embarrassing. In other words, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sees both a moral issue about accountability and a strategic political issue that will serve in future electoral campaigns for Democrats. Nothing in her text, apart from the insulting but appropriate epithet “sycophants” suggests a desire to ostracize or purge anyone.

      Politico and other media make no attempt to analyze this dimension of the question. Instead, they misrepresent it not only as an outrageous, undemocratic, disrespectful aggression on Ocasio-Cortez’s part, but one with fascist overtones. On Twitter and elsewhere, it has produced suggestive chatter about “making lists” that evoke Nazi Germany (following the dictates of Godwin’s law). Even the usually astute Saagar Enjeti on The Hill’s “Rising” complained that AOC was making a list. But as a Republican, Enjeti may have had his own motives for doing so.

      Historical Note

      In the age of social media, plausible deniability has become an essential item in every politician’s toolbox. But denial need not always be plausible, as Trump has repeatedly demonstrated. President-elect Joe Biden has also provided outstanding examples of not very plausible denial of his past positions. When reminded of his active role in promoting George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq during the primaries, he implausibly denied the well-documented fact that he actively supported that war.

      Troves of public evidence exist of Biden playing the paradoxical role of a Democratic leader backing the dishonest and murderous policies of a Republican president. A year ago, Vox reminded its readers that “his record, well documented in speeches on the Senate floor, congressional hearings, and press interviews from 2001 through his time in the White House, is that of a senator bullish about the push to war who helped sell the Bush administration’s pitch to the American public.”

      Biden’s mendacious claim that he opposed the Iraq War may have lacked plausibility for anyone enterprising enough to consult the public archives, but it didn’t prevent him from being nominated by the party and elected by the people. Denial can work. He had an easier job plausibly denying Tara Reade’s accusation of sexual assault since there was no video of it in the archives, but even that required a concerted effort by The New York Times to make it plausible enough to disappear as a serious campaign issue.

      One reason Biden could successfully lie about his support for the Iraq war was President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to challenge Biden on that issue. Trump is still engaged in Iraq. And in Washington, the reigning orthodoxy is to consider all US wars legitimate. It might even be deemed insulting to the troops for a commander-in-chief to admit that all presidents have shown an alacrity for sending them into harm’s way on unfounded pretexts. It’s part of their job profile.

      A Trump ally targeted by AOC’s tweet and cited by Politico offers one very pertinent insight: “They argue that if the Bush-era politicians and staffers who led the country to war in Iraq survived without being purged from politics, media and corporate America, then Trump’s advisers won’t either.” There’s nothing to fear.

      Barack Obama famously refused to consider any investigation into the manifest war crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration. He cited the importance of looking forward rather than backward. That seems to have defined the pattern for future administrations. Every administration’s sins must be forgotten, if not forgiven. That is precisely the argument Saagar Enjeti seems to be making: that bad policies are made by good people who may just have been obeying orders (even when giving them). Like Obama’s “look forward, not backward” approach, Enjeti argues: “Let’s take down the temperature.” In other words, let bygones be bygones.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is nevertheless making a serious and pragmatic point that Democrats would be wise to carefully listen to and act on. In any election, negative facts concerning the opponent will have a much greater impact in terms of vote-getting than the discussion of positions on political issues. Material evidence, including deleted tweets, will be usable. That is so fundamental a principle that most politicians nowadays totally neglect the issues and focus exclusively on their opponent’s flaws.

      As for worries about being ostracized, the Politico article makes it clear that the entire complaint from the Republicans and the media is nothing more than political theater. A close adviser of Trump cited in the article points to the comfortable post-political career of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. He boasts about his own opportunities to make money as a consultant and author, thanks to his experience at the Trump White House. The adviser then offers this comforting thought: “Bush left office very unpopular, people thought thousands of people died in an unnecessary war and he was responsible for it. Everybody forgets that now that he’s an artist who doesn’t do partisan politics.” So, even if ostracized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, life is pretty good.

      The adviser adds one more telling remark referring to junior staffers in the White House: “You have breathed rarefied air.” In other words, you belong to a protected realm at the core of the oligarchy, where there will always be connections, cash and opportunities to go for an exciting new ride as you accompany other prominent faces and suck in even more rarefied air.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Joe Biden’s Less Than “Triumphant” Victory

      by

      A team of three New York Times reporters provided its verdict on the surreal election in which, after days of tabulation, the Democrat Joe Biden eventually emerged as the official winner. Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Katie Glueck described the outcome in these terms: “Mr. Biden stands triumphant in a campaign he waged on just those terms: as a patriotic crusade to reclaim the American government from a president he considered a poisonous figure.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Triumphant:

      An adjective usually reserved for the authors of exceptional, definitive victories that have a lasting impact on history, but which, in contemporary US culture, can be applied by a winner’s supporters to any candidate they approve of who ekes out any kind of victory by hook or by crook or by sheer luck.

      Contextual Note

      Given its well-known allegiance to the Democratic Party establishment, The New York Times has every reason to invent the mythology they want their public to subscribe to. If people believe that Biden has triumphed, there is a good chance the enemies of The New York Times and the Democratic Party will accept defeat. Those enemies basically consist of Donald Trump and the progressive left.

      The article’s subtitle reads: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned as a sober and conventional presence, concerned about the ‘soul of the country.’” That is a fair enough description of his colorless campaign. It insidiously suggests that sticking to the middle, not making waves and avoiding radical programs is the recipe for triumph. But it is followed by a further, more dubious claim: “He correctly judged the character of the country, and benefited from President Trump’s missteps.”

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      The second half of that sentence is unquestionably true. Trump effectively shot himself in both feet during the campaign, paving the way for a Biden victory. Most people were surprised that Biden didn’t win by a landslide. Had he done so, there might have been grounds for asserting that he “correctly judged the character of the country.” Whatever Biden did, it had the not very triumphal effect of motivating nearly 72 million people to vote against him and in favor of the incumbent. The authors’ belief in Biden’s insight into the mood of the nation looks like a case of wish fulfillment rather than serious political reporting. But The Times has heavily invested in wish fulfillment over the past four years.

      A more accurate account would note that Biden judged nothing at all, correctly or incorrectly. After former President Barack Obama ordered all the other prominent moderate candidates to back Biden, the former vice president mechanically followed a program that had already been laid out for him in the 2016 election. At that time, after some hesitation, due probably to his judgment that Hillary Clinton had a prior claim, he deferred to the Clinton machine and let the former first lady lead the party to the forecast glorious victory that never was.

      This time around, with Clinton relegated to an embarrassing footnote in future US history books, Biden stumbled into the Democratic nomination only after the primary voters rejected the party’s hoped for “moderate” savior, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, an outrageous oligarch who, during his short and expensive run, demonstrated how easy it was to buy the party’s — but not the voters’ —loyalty.

      At no point in that process did Biden demonstrate an ability to judge the character of the country. What better proof of that than the ambiguous finish to the election itself that required days of laborious counting of absentee ballots in six states for him to get past the finish line and cap off his suspense-ridden contest against a pathologically flawed opponent?

      If Biden had been capable of judging the character of the country, he would have realized that 2020 may prove to be the last election built around the binary logic of a “liberal” Democratic Party opposed to a “conservative” Republican Party. His party stopped being liberal long ago, as he himself clearly realized when he recruited Republicans John Kasich, Colin Powell and Meg Whitman to be headliners at the convention that would nominate him.

      Joe Biden was little more than the name the Democrats put on the ballot to get past a failing and flailing Trump. His defeat of Donald Trump was great news for the nation and the world, but it clearly wasn’t a triumph and reflected nothing significant about the character of the country other than the fact that it remains radically polarized.

      It could have been a triumph, but two things were missing. The first was enthusiasm for Biden’s candidacy. He represented nothing voters could get excited about. Also lacking was even a vague sense of mission in the face of multiple monumental challenges. The only visible enthusiasm for his candidacy came from big donors on Wall Street who felt more comfortable with a traditional Democrat than a non-traditional Republican, even though they spontaneously endorse Republicans. They expressed their enthusiasm for Biden by generously financing his campaign.

      Historical Note

      Later in the article, the authors appear to admit that Biden’s campaign was not the triumph they initially hinted at: “It was not the most inspirational campaign in recent times, nor the most daring, nor the most agile.” They concede that he was not “an uplifting herald of change.” Instead, they give him credit for “discipline and restraint.” Shakespeare’s John Falstaff called that “discretion” when he played dead on the battlefield to avoid being assaulted by the enemy: “The better part of valor is discretion.”

      The authors claim that Biden’s electoral success could be attributed to “how fully Mr. Biden’s campaign flowed from his own worldview and political intuition.” They even cite some of the features of his worldview: “the antiquated vocabulary and penchant for embellishment, his nostalgic yarns about segregationist senators and a defensiveness that led him, in one case, to challenge a voter to a push-up contest.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Biden they present is a mid-20th-century macho white man whose personal culture paradoxically embodies the very idea Trump promoted with his slogan “Make America Great Again.” Biden is a relic of the good ol’ days, the fulfillment of Trump’s ideological mission. If this were a Hollywood screenplay, Biden would be the good cop partnered with Trump, the bad cop.

      The authors dodge the question of the historical origins of Biden’s worldview, inherited from another epoch and clearly ill-adapted to a world of pandemics, planetary destruction, a financialized economy, rudderless nationalism and endless military quagmires created and sustained by Biden’s generation. One might think addressing these dire issues could be the prelude to a triumph. Instead, the authors applaud Biden for focusing on maligning Trump’s character while “shunning countless other issues as needless distractions.” The health of the people, the planet and the economy are written off as “needless distractions.”

      Biden is likely to be the most isolated president in US history. By definition, he has the entire Republican Party opposed to him and, more particularly, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — despite Biden’s touted ability to reach across the aisle and his personal friendship with McConnell. The populist Trump movement, which will most likely persist and possibly grow in force, will continue maligning him for stealing The Donald’s reelection. He will have the entire progressive wing of his own party — which possibly represents a majority of Democrats and certainly the majority of young voters — ready to strike back at him as soon they discover his likely refusal to take on board their agenda.

      Even if he does open up toward the progressive left under the pressure of uncontrollable events, he will have not just his anti-Trump Republican friends revolting against him but also the far more significant Wall Street donors. In other words, after a few months in office, Biden may well lose the trust of 80% of the voting population across the political spectrum. The party stalwarts will remain with him, but the credibility of people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff has taken a serious hit after four years of Russiagate and Trump’s bungled impeachment.

      Biden will most likely also fail to merit the attention of the late-night comedians who for four years have thrived on the comic material Donald Trump dropped in their lap on a daily basis. That’s what inevitably comes of preferring discretion over valor.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      America’s Moment of National Reckoning

      by

      America has just concluded a cataclysmic Election Day and its immediate aftermath. What was supposed to be our quadrennial celebration of democratic institutions is instead a reflection of what happens when unprincipled and corrupt leaders are given access to the national stage to promote disorder, distrust and chaos. It seems likely that the outcome of the vote will be finalized in the days ahead and that Joe Biden will have won the election. But until Trump is chained in his White House bunker without public access, the peaceful transfer of power remains at risk.

      Add to the equation that there is a deep sense among progressive activists, people of color, the underprivileged and the under-represented that over 71.5 million votes for Trump was a direct repudiation of their demands for a dynamic push forward for social, economic and racial justice in America. And this doesn’t even get to the immediacy of confronting a rampaging pandemic at home and an abundance of global challenges.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      Amid the chaos, let me be clear that I hope an armed confrontation can be avoided and that there will be enough leadership and institutional integrity to force an orderly transfer of power. However, the election results make clear that many more people voted for Trump this time than last time. Targeted right-wing messaging works, and there is no apparent antidote. Those 71.5 million votes for Trump are a terrible outcome for a nation at war with itself and in which only the right-wingers have the guns.

      As Biden’s victory sets in, there will be those who cheered on Trump and his toxic message who will not rest until they try to blow something up along with the country itself. As that unfolds, there is likely to be the first foundational test of America’s political and military institutions since the Civil War. I am not sure those institutions will hold. It is certainly not clear that those institutions can ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

      Healing the Nation

      At some point, something will have to give. At that point, a crippled America will harvest the rancid fruit of decades of delusion about how “exceptional” the nation was as it grew intellectually lazy, willed its future to greedy and corrupt capitalists, and utterly failed to invest in a sustainable system of governance that could meet the challenges of an evolving world. Picking up the pieces will not be easy.

      The 50-state solution so beloved by those wallowing in the 19th century simply must be discarded, and some new foundation for national governance must be designed and implemented. Unfortunately, with the coronavirus pandemic ripping its way through the populace and a court system packed with those 19th-century wannabes, the time for wishful thinking will have to wait. The 50-state solution will have to be urgently junked to address the pandemic with a national plan and national mandates. Maybe afterward, America can study the results of the coordinated national response and find the way to a new, vibrant, 21st-century federal system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, there will be an enormous amount of focus on how America got to this point, but I want to get out front that years of “false equivalency” disguised as “balance” or “fairness” has poisoned the nation’s well of fact-based knowledge from which any democratic nation would hope that its citizens could draw. Much has been said about willful ignorance, but not enough about the fountains of falsehoods that feed those unwilling to learn much of anything that requires factual focus. Repetition of belief is no substitute for acquisition of knowledge.

      The impending national convulsion has just begun. A reckoning with collective ignorance and the arrogance of ignorance is essential as the starting point for a meaningful national dialog about how America so completely lost its way. The responsible mainstream media and social media outlets have to stop honoring falsehood with repetition and that most ludicrous of questions — “What’s your response?” And to try to rebuild lost credibility, real and transparent sourcing of news reporting has to again become the rule.

      Then, if government institutions are to be resurrected and strengthened, there must be some measure of accountability for those who worked so diligently to undermine governance, often to enhance their own wealth and power. Today’s list of the corrupt is really long. Trump is a sick symptom, a tool used by so many others to achieve corrupt ends. But he is also symbolic of so much of what is so wrong that his accountability is an essential component of any national reckoning.

      It is important that Trump be charged with the crimes he has committed both in office and in his corrupt life that led to his election in the first place in 2016. It is equally important that those in his inner circle, including his family, his enabling aides, his attorney general and his secretary of state, all find themselves under criminal investigative scrutiny.

      This will surely further divide the nation. But it will be impossible to begin the healing if there is no accountability for the intentional wrongdoing that has led to so much suffering and dysfunction. Those who corruptly profited from the past should have to pay in the present if there is to be a future with the rule of law restored to its proper place in the national pantheon of virtues.

      Joe Biden’s Inauguration

      However, the critical first task ahead is to ensure Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Unfortunately, that date is over 10 weeks away. Ten weeks of an angry and “victimized” Trump still empowered to “govern” will bleed so much more blood from the nation. He will have to be thwarted at every turn each and every day, so the hard work of restoration can begin now.

      This must start with a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic that is raging across America and much of the globe. This cannot wait 10 more weeks. There is no need for a “balanced” discussion because we have no choice. We have seen how a venal leader can lead so many to their demise and so many more to a participatory march to more death and disease.

      Biden must try hard to convince those participatory marchers to turn around, look at those they care about and start protecting themselves and others. This will be a hard sell, and those of us who have already seen this light will have to step up our game as well. It is no longer fine for corporate sloths and all those endangered small businesses to wink at their “no mask, no entry” signs. It is time for local governments to publicly out those businesses that do not enforce mask mandates and social distancing in their community and publicly support those that do.

      I am hardly certain where any of this will end. But I am certain that the false narrative of a caring, giving and committed people has now finally been ripped from our delusional midst. America is not now, nor has it often been, much of anything to be proud of.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      For Biden, Anything’s Possible

      by

      In speech after speech, US President-elect Joe Biden has affirmed the basis of his future agenda in no uncertain terms. It consists of a single word and amounts to the kind of religious dogma that requires an effort of belief on the part of the faithful — his voters. The word is “possibilities.” 

      In his victory speech on Saturday, Biden confessed once again: “I’ve always believed we can define America in one word: possibilities.” Does it matter that equating an existing nation with the open-ended concept of “possibilities” makes no sense, logically, linguistically or even rhetorically? His audience is best advised to treat this as a feeble attempt at political poetry.

      The Future of the Semi-Victorious Democratic Party

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      Biden never tires of explaining “possibilities” as the nation’s ability to achieve whatever it sets out to achieve, his interpretation of the American dream applied not to individuals, but to the nation as a whole. In his closing remarks he returned to his favorite, endlessly repeated cliché about the nation, the idea that “there has never been anything we have not been able to do when we’ve done it together.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Never:

      The negation of “ever” that serves to deny the existence or even possible existence of an event within a given period of time, a concept essential to the rhetoric of politicians who, in their commitment to an idealized hyperreality, use it to exclude obvious aspects of reality from the public’s consideration.

      Contextual Note

      Logicians may find it paradoxical that Joe Biden’s thought processes allow him to juxtapose two apparently contradictory concepts. He insists on unrestricted “possibilities” but simultaneously reduces the range of possibility by proposing a litany of things that can “never” happen in America. He has, in other words, excluded those events from the realm of possibility, including the idea that the US may not achieve any of its goals. That is how hyperreality works: It excludes visible reality while supporting the illusion of inclusion.

      Biden was born into a world where reality still had a strong claim on people’s lives. In 1942, a war was raging in Europe and the Pacific. Soldiers on the ground were killing other soldiers, unlike the reality of today’s wars, all of which Biden has consistently promoted and supported. Today our drones rather than actual soldiers do the killing, turning death itself into a mere forgotten feature of the hyperreality’s elaborate decor.

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      We can thus forgive Biden for committing the mistake that no true proponent of hyperreality is permitted to make: the sin of hinting that reality might be a “possible” alternative to hyperreality. That explains why Biden feels the need to appeal to the absurd idea of “never.” He must assert through denial what people in a hyperreal world are expected to take for granted.

      A close reading of Biden’s language can prove useful in situating the borderline in his mind between the real and the hyperreal. At one point, Biden says, “You see, I believe in the possibility of this country.” This implies that some people do not believe in it. But what can “the possibility of this country” possibly mean? Has he been reading Michel Houellebecq’s “The Possibility of an Island”? Unlike the French author, who poetically and philosophically imagined that “in the realm of time, there exists the possibility of an island,” Biden more prosaically seems to be saying,” Give me a chance to try some things out, because anything is possible,” without even hinting at what it is he would like to try out.

      He then attempts to add some precision: “We’re always looking ahead. Ahead to an America that’s freer and more just. Ahead to an America that creates jobs with dignity and respect. Ahead to an America that cures disease … Ahead to an America that never leaves anyone behind.” He fails to mention the logical corollary of this, that if America is always looking ahead, it is because, contrary to his claim, it has never managed to accomplish any of these goals it set out to achieve in the past.

      Another interpretation is possible. He could mean that “looking ahead” is a good enough solution, a proof of virtue. No result is required. In reality, his message is that because none of these goals have been satisfactorily accomplished, it’s now time to act. A cynic might say, “Joe, you’ve been in politics for 45 years and at the highest level for 8 years, why are there no results?” Another cynic might answer that accomplishing these things would impede politicians from having any serious promises to make to get elected.

      Biden then offers a trio of clichés that Americans of Biden’s generation never tire of hearing: “an America that never gives up, never gives in,” “a great nation” and, finally, “we are a good people.” This serves as a setup for the patented line he used over and over again in the debates and his stump speeches. The transcript reads: “This is the United States of America. And there has never been anything, never been anything we’ve been able, not able to do when we’ve done it together.” In this version, before catching himself, he nearly repeated his embarrassing Freudian slip when he said at this year’s Democratic National Convention that “there’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together.” Had Freud heard this repeat performance, it would have jolted the Viennese psychoanalyst to attention.

      True to his time-honored vocation of a plagiarist, Biden even quotes Warren Buffett without citing him: “It’s always been a bad bet to bet against America.” This was probably just a sop for his Wall Street donors to reassure them that he won’t try too hard to ensure that America “never leaves anyone behind.”

      The majority of Americans deservedly find themselves in a joyful mood after Biden’s defeat of the inveterate liar, cheater and thief who has occupied the White House for the past four years and still managed to get nearly 71 million people to vote for him. With Trump’s lies out of the way, Biden’s electors need to begin listening closely to the new president’s words as well as to examine his deeds.

      Historical Note

      Joe Biden’s belief in “possibilities” is fraught with deeper levels of ambiguity than mere wishful thinking about doing things better in the future. It implies a vision or philosophy of history that he expects Americans to share with him, a philosophy that most young people are no longer ready to adhere to. It’s the Panglossian idea that US history is the story of one long progress toward greater and greater perfection.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A linguist or philosopher might point out that Biden’s statement, “we can define America in one word: possibilities,” is a truism. It also signifies that the nation has no definition. But the events of history provide a definition, reducing the extent of possibilities. In 1861, it was still possible that the South could end up winning the Civil War, sundering the American nation in two. In 1933, the so-called Business Plot could have overthrown Franklin D. Roosevelt and effectively installed a fascist pro-Nazi government. History decided otherwise.

      Most Americans today, and certainly Joe Biden, are happy that those two events never occurred, though we may suspect that many of Donald Trump’s supporters disagree. A separate Confederacy and a fascist US were real historical “possibilities.” And that should tell us that Biden’s celebration of possibilities may have its dark side, one requiring everyone’s vigilance.

      Another possible reading of US history points to the systematic closing, rather than the opening of, possibilities. The South lost the Civil War and slavery was abolished. But, with Jim Crow, the US immediately put into place an alternate system that perpetuated racism and the continued marginalization of black Americans. Even after the civil rights movement, new tactics have permitted racism to perdure. The possibility of equality and justice has been effectively countered.

      The Business Plot was foiled, but what it aimed at fell into place after World War II with the establishment of a militarized economy controlled by dominant financial and industrial interests and protected by a political class that, with one exception in 1961, has consistently refused to pronounce the dreaded phrase, military-industrial complex. Biden is right. When Americans set their mind to it, they can make any possibility real. But not all possibilities are equal.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      What Happened to Trump’s Big, Beautiful Wall?

      by

      One of the best-known of Donald Trump’s many campaign promises in 2016 was that “he” would build a “big, beautiful wall” along America’s southern border with Mexico to prevent illegal migrants from “shithole countries” crossing into the United States. And the best thing about it? The Mexican government was going to pay for it. Not entirely surprising to anyone with even a little sense of reality, the Mexican government was not completely sold on the idea, perhaps because it had not been consulted beforehand.  

      As a German, I know something about walls. After all, for decades in the postwar period, Germany was divided into two states — the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — separated by a beautiful and highly efficient wall. Ironically, one of the great icons of American Republicanism (the party, not the constitutional order), Ronald Reagan, at a moment of complete mental blackout, thought it would be a good idea to tear down the wall. Or so he called upon his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a well-known speech held in West Berlin in 1987.

      The Psychology of the Wall

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      The Berlin Wall was built in the early 1960s, first in Berlin, then along the whole of the inner border between East and West. It was a great wall, a monument to the ingenuity of West Germany’s government to get its counterpart in the East to build an impenetrable barrier preventing millions of desperate, poverty-stricken Easterners from invading the West in order to take away jobs from hardworking West Germans and take advantage of the FRG’s lavish social welfare benefits. And the best thing? The East Germans built the wall and the East German government paid for the whole shebang.

      Now, that’s what you call the art of the deal. Unfortunately, in 1989, the party came to an abrupt end. On November 9, the wall was demolished, Easterners flooded the West, bringing with them not only xenophobia and racism, but an entitlement mentality which has cost and continues to cost unified Germany billions of euros. Not for nothing, around a quarter of West Germans wished, according to representative surveys, that the wall were rebuilt.

      Of Wall and Facts

      Trigger warning: Those of my readers (if there are any) who have been brainwashed by Fox News and the Murdoch empire, be warned. My rendition of what caused the building of the wall across the two Germanys is fake news, or better, an attempt at irony. West Germans always loved their sisters and brothers on the other side of the border, always yearned for the day the two parts of the country would be reunited. The East German government never intended to build the wall but was forced to do so in order to keep Western imperialists out of East Germany’s workers’ and peasants’ paradise and protect the great socioeconomic advances the GDR had made under the wise leadership of the East German Communist Party. Or so the story went.

      Now, to get back to the main topic of this article, what about Trump’s wall? First, some facts. The border between the United States and Mexico extends over more than 2,000 miles, around two-thirds of which consists of the Rio Grande River. Only about 700 miles are on land. Even before Trump took office, most of the land border between the two countries was fortified by fences, thanks to both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. As Obama stated in 2009, “I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration. But they can’t have a situation where you just have half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Both Bush and Obama were pro-immigration. Both understood, however, that a significant number of Americans were not entirely sold on the idea. Surveys show that Americans are generally well-disposed toward immigrants, certainly better disposed than Europeans. At the same time, however, there are also considerable concerns. In 2018, about half of respondents thought that immigrants represented a burden on local communities “by using more than their share of social services” — a proposition supported by three-quarters of Republican respondents, compared to merely a bit more than a third of Democrats. The extension of border fortifications along the US-Mexican border was supposed to alleviate the anxieties and fears of those hostile to immigration while soliciting support for a comprehensive overhaul of immigration policy.

      Immigration reform never happened. Instead, one administration after the other tinkered with a system, increasingly seen as dysfunctional, particularly with regard to the question of undocumented immigrants, without ever seriously addressing the misgivings of large parts of the American public.  This allowed Trump to promote an extremist solution to an issue that had been smoldering for decades. This was largely in line with a larger political agenda aimed at transforming the republic into a form of ethnocracy, defined as a “government or rule by a particular ethnic group,” in the US case by Americans of European descent, or what is generally known as white supremacy.

      In the Trumpian nativist narrative, the wall was of central importance. Better still, it had the appearance of a relatively simple fix to a highly complex issue, which goes right to the heart of American identity and self-understanding. It might be appropriate in this context to recall the inscription etched into the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This is the claim. Reality has always been somewhat different. Over the past several decades, Americans have been increasingly less than welcoming to the world’s poor huddled masses, particularly if they happened to come from south of the border. Again, this is nothing new. Not long after the establishment of the republic, American pamphleteers charged European governments with dumping their poor onto the shores of the new nation.

      Unkept Promises

      Ironically enough, while the wall was a central selling point in Trump’s 2016 campaign, Americans were less than convinced. In a Gallup poll from January 2017, a mere quarter of respondents thought it was “very important” that Trump kept his promise to build a wall along the Mexican border. This was way below repairing infrastructure, reducing income taxes for all Americans, raising tariffs on foreign imports and deporting illegal immigrants who had committed a crime. Each one of these issues had majority support. In short, most Americans could care less about Trump’s big, beautiful wall, perhaps out of recognition that walls are hardly ever beautiful. In fact, they are just depressing, as anyone who had visited Berlin during the Cold War can attest.

      This might explain at least in part why the wall never really got off the ground. In fact, during the roughly four years of the Trump administration, only 15 miles of new barriers were built. The rest were repairs and replacements of already existing structures. None of this has come even close to a big, beautiful wall. Nevertheless, the illusion was being kept up, making for some rather grotesque displays along the southern border. They remind one of the last remnants of that other great, beautiful wall on exhibition for curious tourists to admire a few hundred meters along a river in what used to be East Berlin, the former capital of the GDR.

      The wall is just one, albeit an eminently symbolic one, of the many unkept promises scattered around Trump’s four years in office. Not that he failed to remind his adoring fans of his determination. The pinnacle, at least with respect to the wall, was probably his proud statement a year ago at a rally in Pittsburgh that his administration was “building a wall in Colorado,” a “beautiful wall, a big one that really works, that you can’t get over, you can’t get under.” Presumably, the wall was supposed to keep those crafty New Mexicans from stealing jobs from the good people of Colorado, or perhaps their marijuana. No wonder, New Mexicans came out in favor of Joe Biden; but then, so did a majority of voters in Colorado. Apparently, Hannibal Lecter was right, gratitude does have a short half-life.

      Perhaps Donald Trump should have taken seriously what American voters expected from him. It might have dawned on him that repairing America’s infrastructure was significantly more important for most voters than building a wall in the middle of nowhere. One year after Trump assumed his office, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) accorded America’s infrastructure a grade of D+. For those not familiar with the American grading system, a D+ is not good. Students that get a D+ are awarded the grade for showing up in class. In 2019, the ASCE estimated that the US needed “to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country’s roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure.”

      The Trump administration did little to nothing to reverse America’s infrastructure crisis. As one commentator put it in 2019, Trump’s claims were just that, getting “Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes.” As Marie Antoinette might have put it, let them take private jets or helicopters.

      Under the circumstances, it is perhaps not altogether surprising that last week, Donald Trump lost his bid for a new four-year term. As a result, he might never see the completion of his life’s work, that big, beautiful wall, a tribute to man’s determination to accomplish the seemingly impossible, to do the right thing, against all odds, even if it is completely ludicrous. To quote that great inspirational movie from 1978, a time when things were still hunky-dory and even the most outrageous college dropout could aspire to become a distinguished member of the US Senate: “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! We’re just the guys to do it.”

      Unfortunately for Trump, a majority of American voters were unimpressed and decided that one more wall in Colorado was one wall too many. And, to heap injury upon injury, once again the Chinese, with their Great Wall, have gotten the better of Donald Trump.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      The Future of the Semi-Victorious Democratic Party

      by

      New York Times reporter Astead W. Herndon introduced his post-election interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by reminding readers how the ebullient progressive Democrat has dutifully played the role the Democrats requested of her during the presidential election campaign. “For months,” he wrote, “Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a good soldier for the Democratic Party and Joseph R. Biden Jr as he sought to defeat President Trump.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Good soldier:

      A metaphor applied to anyone who obeys even ill-conceived orders commanded by an abusive authority and who will be valued not for their valor as a solider or their integrity as a citizen, but only for the number of enemies they have killed.

      Contextual Note

      Herndon’s choice of metaphor perfectly sums up the attitude of a party that, since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, has consistently glorified war. It is also a party that increasingly celebrates billionaires, Rhodes scholars, intelligence officers and generals while marginalizing the lowly, which includes bartenders, bus drivers and other “deplorables,” as well as its own loyal foot soldiers.

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez began her wage-earning career as a bartender before demonstrating her talents as a political strategist. At the same time, she capitalized on her budding stardom by accepting to play the foot soldier for the Democrats. In the interview, she recounts her forays against the Republican enemy during this election campaign: “I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help.”

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      Mainstream Democrats see Republicans as their rivals and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as their enemy. And not only her, but the majority of Democratic voters, who polls tell us clamor for single-payer health insurance and free college. In the interview, Ocasio-Cortez tries to warn her colleagues that “their base is not the enemy.”

      Ocasio-Cortez exposes the fundamental issue both parties will have to deal with after Joe Biden’s victory: redefining their base. Do they even have one? Donald Trump proved that something resembling a base existed on the right side of the spectrum. He gave it a forceful voice. It appealed to xenophobia and a rejection of what might be called urban values in favor of an illusory small-town and suburban ideal that has always occupied a sentimental place in America’s imagination. How ironic that it was a wealthy Manhattan real estate mogul who managed to mobilize those energies. The Democrats have not even tried to define their base, hoping that people will assume it’s the working class.

      To the question, “What can we expect from you in the next four years?” Ocasio-Cortez replied: “I don’t know. How the party responds will very much inform my approach and what I think is going to be necessary.” The party has shown no interest in understanding what it claims to be its working-class base. She expects the party to continue its “smothering approach” to anyone who seeks to respond to the increasingly evident needs of the base. She describes its effects: “It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party thinking you’re the enemy.”

      In his victory speech Saturday evening, Biden promised to unify the nation: “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now.” How about unifying the party? Will the party under Biden’s leadership end its demonizing of its own most dynamic members? Biden ended his victory speech with this idea: “Spread the faith.” “Spreading” — the faith, the truth or anything else — in Latin is “propagare,” from which the word “propaganda” is derived. Is that what Biden is proposing for the next four years: faith instead of action and moderate mainstream propaganda to replace Trump and Pompeo’s populist right-wing agenda?

      Historical Note

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wonders “whether the party is going to be honest about doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost.” History tells us that’s unlikely. The experience following the 2016 election revealed the Democrats’ chronic incapacity to conduct an honest autopsy of their defeats. They condemned Donald Trump’s personal bombast and vanity. But the Democratic Party as a whole shares those vices. It targets different enemies, but its methods are similar. The vain and bombastic never admit past mistakes. Instead, they always seek someone else to blame for their own failures.

      Donald Trump set the tone when he began his first presidential campaign in 2015. He blamed the Mexican people for everything that was troubling a nation still reeling from a crisis engineered and precipitated a decade earlier, not by Latinos, but by the financial wizards of Wall Street. Once elected, Trump chose a new bugbear: Muslims. He did this even while kowtowing, on his first foreign visit, to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the despotic ruler of the oil-rich kingdom that had supplied 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. Finally, when a global pandemic wreaked havoc on the US economy, threatening his prospects for reelection, Trump blamed the Chinese.

      Trump’s consistency in blaming other groups of people manifestly inspired the Democrats. Taking the hint from Hillary Clinton after her ignominious defeat to the least qualified candidate in the history of American elections, the Democratic Party claimed that all the fault could be laid at the feet of the Russians. That produced three years of media and courtroom drama, culminating in a farcical impeachment that essentially revealed the inanity of the entire exercise and the futile absurdity of the Democrats’ strategy.

      Nothing beyond the anecdotal justified either Trump’s accusations against the nation of his choice or the Democrats’ demonization of Russia. Worse, this voluntary blindness allowed both Trump and the Democrats to avoid using the existing evidence to seek a deeper understanding of the weaknesses of the nation’s political culture. They preferred to deflect blame by promoting the blanket judgment of an entire nation, people or race.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In Saturday’s speech, Biden proclaimed: “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another, it’s not some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make. And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate.”

      Has the president-elect’s absence from politics after his eight years as vice president and his retreat into the basement in 2020 blinded him from the reality of the growing instability within both parties? Defining the nation according to a simple binary opposition of Republicans vs. Democrats is a worn-out heritage of the 20th century, when people accepted and even clung to those labels. Both parties are now clearly divided, if not fragmented. The labels have lost their meaning.

      Large swaths of Americans now perceive both parties for what they are: two clubs of privileged oligarchs and moneyed interests that have acquired the habit of sharing the same resources, managing them in their common interest and disguising their collusion by bickering petulantly in public over trivialities. They thereby create the impression, exploited by the media, that they are dealing with serious issues. This political pantomime enables the parties to agree on “reasonable compromises” designed to obscure the real issues, at best papering over problems rather than addressing them. At worst, it means applying King Solomon’s justice literally by cutting the baby in two while offering the contending ladies their blessings and then wishing them better luck after the next election.

      Nothing today indicates that Joe Biden will even try to mobilize the resources and the political will needed to solve the pressing issues he has himself promised to address. Whether it’s COVID-19, the plight of working people in a crippled economy, climate change or racial injustice, the compromises Democrats and Republicans habitually make have long been the source of these problems rather than their solutions.

      The two parties are prisoners of a system of their own making that aggravates crises. And the crises listed above are all coursing toward a tipping point beyond which systemic implosion looks inevitable. Sudden collapse can no doubt be avoided, and Joe Biden should be better at avoiding it than Trump. But it can only be achieved at the price of acknowledging that collapse is actually threatening. That is something neither party will accept to do. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More