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      in US Politics

      Republicans dig in and prepare to sink Democrats’ voting rights bill

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      Senate Republicans are preparing to unanimously block Democrats’ marquee election reform legislation, in a move that sets the stage for a bitter showdown over the future of voting rights across America and the survival of the filibuster rule.The Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and a dozen top lieutenants said on Thursday that they would vote down the bill known as S1, predicting that not a single Republican would cross the aisle to join Democrats.McConnell also said Republicans would not support S1 even if a revised version, with changes amenable to Republicans, was introduced.“Equally unacceptable, totally inappropriate – all Republicans, I think, will oppose that,” he said.The opposition from McConnell, who commands deep and authoritative control over Republicans in the Senate, is all but certain to ensure the failure of S1 when the bill is set to be introduced on the Senate floor next week.Democrats are relying on S1 to expand ballot access and tighten controls on campaign spending as they attempt to roll back a wave of new Republican voter restrictions, passed in response to Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 presidential election. The Republican measures are set to have a particular impact on communities of color, and are seen as likely to suppress the Democratic vote.The bill was revised this week to include a number of Republican priorities, including voter ID requirements, after longtime Senate Democratic holdout Joe Manchin indicated he would extend his support if his party made the changes to secure bipartisan support.But McConnell’s forceful denunciation, making clear that no election reform bill has a chance of passage, suggests the futility of seeking bipartisanship with a Republican party openly committed to thwarting Democrats’ legislative agenda.The expected blanket opposition from Republicans came soon after the revised S1 bill gained a notable endorsement from senior Democratic figure and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, who said on CNN she would absolutely support the proposal, and heralded it as the first step to preserving democracy.Abrams, a former Georgia candidate for governor credited with helping deliver Joe Biden the presidency, is unpopular with Republicans – and they quickly used her words of support to call the revised S1 bill unacceptable.“When Stacey Abrams immediately endorsed senator Manchin’s proposal, it became the Stacey Abrams substitute, not the Joe Manchin substitute,” said Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Senate Rules committee, which oversees election issues.The resistance from McConnell and his lieutenants is likely to head off the growing push for election reform legislation, but it also threatened to reopen the simmering tensions over whether to impose new limits on the filibuster.McConnell’s hard-line approach to doom S1 is backstopped by the filibuster – the 60-vote supermajority rule that gives a united minority party ability to block any legislation – and his knowledge that Manchin remains opposed to changing that rule, even though its existance thwarts the passing of much of Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda.But now, with Manchin’s own version of S1 in peril, some Democrats are suggesting that a party-line vote that confirms the legislation would have become law were it not for Republican opposition, would force the West Virginian to confront a reckoning with the filibuster.The Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has already started making the case for imposing new limits on the filibuster by lining up votes on measures certain to be blocked – and demonstrate that Republicans have turned the rule into a weapon of bad-faith politics.Schumer’s idea is to show Manchin, and a handful of other Democrats opposed to curbing the filibuster, that Republicans are only interested in sinking all Democratic policies, and that he has no choice but to defuse the rule in order to pass their legislative priorities.The pressure to change Senate rules is also growing from Democrats in the House, where the majority whip Jim Clyburn is pushing for Manchin to support carving out an exception to the filibuster for election reform bills, according to a source familiar with the matter.It was not immediately clear on Friday how Manchin might proceed should Republicans filibuster his own version of S1.But as Republicans sounded the death knell for the bill, Manchin, on a recent Zoom call reported by the Intercept, told the centrist group No Labels that he was considering whether to call for lowering the filibuster threshold to 55 from 60 votes.Such a change would still not pave the way for the passage of S1, but it would significantly improve the prospects of other Democratic measures just short of 60 votes, from narrower voting rights bills to a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s Optimism vs. the Media’s Pessimism

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      Media commentators initially gave good ratings to US President Joe Biden after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They expressed a sense of relief, in large part due to the contrast in tone with Donald Trump’s performance in similar situations, guaranteed to produce a sense of unexpected drama. Biden confirmed his image of a seasoned diplomat capable of engaging in civil dialogue, setting the stage for eventual problem-solving.

      But the event left US media with mixed emotions. Calm problem-solving may be good in the abstract, but isn’t Russia the evil empire? Isn’t a president’s mission the humiliation of the enemy? The New York Times, for example, has recently been praising Biden as a transformative president. But the Gray Lady has also been locked in a pattern of blaming Russia for every bit of unwelcome news affecting the US, from cybercrime and UFOs to directed energy attacks and more.

      Biden’s Binary Battle Against Putin

      READ MORE

      Prior to the summit, the Times and other outlets prepared their public to expect Biden to charge Putin with a litany of accusations he could not deny. Though no serious journalist expected the script of the meeting to result in a first-round knockout, followed by Putin’s emotional confession of all the crimes he has shamelessly committed against American democracy, they clearly were interested in counting the punches Biden might land to make the Russian leader wince.

      That clearly didn’t happen. Less obsessed by the Russian bugbear, Axios coolly analyzed what it called “Biden’s two-step negotiating process,“ highlighting the fact that his “approach with Putin followed his approach to Congress: try to take the most optimistic path, give it some time and be prepared to march ahead with consequences.”

      CNN and The New York Times showed the kind of impatience outlets obsessed with prosecuting Russia for its endless crimes feel obliged to display. Kaitlin Collins, a reporter at CNN, accused Biden to his face of being “confident” Putin would “change his behavior,” clearly unnerving the president. Michael D. Shea, the White House correspondent at the Times, made a point of expressing that impatience when he wrote: “Mr. Biden’s response to his Russian adversary underscored a persistent feature of his presidency: a stubborn optimism that critics say borders on worrisome naïveté and that allies insist is an essential ingredient to making progress.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Stubborn optimism:

      The only kind of optimism pessimists recognize

      Contextual Note

      Some attribute to P.T. Barnum the phrase, “Never give a sucker an even break.” Barnum did say, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The idea that they never deserve an even break has become the equivalent of a wise saying for many Americans in the world of business.

      The US owes its position as the world’s dominant economy to its ruthlessly competitive business culture. But this harsh reality sits alongside a deep-seated belief in popular democracy and the rosy fantasy of the power of the people. This contrast has spawned an interesting divide within society itself. The capitalists — the makers and doers — in the business world tend to be pessimists. Believers in democracy are optimists. Successful capitalists with a true competitive spirit see most other people — competitors and customers alike — as suckers who deserve to be taken advantage of. This pessimistic disdain for other people is sometimes highlighted as the virtue of assertiveness.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In contrast, the conviction that democracy is the true model of social relations correlates with optimism and trust. For many, this sums up the distinction between the culture associated with Republicans and Democrats. Individualistic Republicans celebrate the assertive winners, whose winning takes place at the expense of the losers, the suckers. Democrats pity the losers, believing they should be encouraged to succeed. Success is most satisfying when it is shared.

      Biden will always play the role of optimist. But that doesn’t imply that he always thinks like an optimist. To be successful during a long career usually requires applying the lessons of pessimism. The “liberal media” in the US — which includes The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN and others — must pay lip service to optimism. But to achieve the success they have achieved, they must also be ready to criticize the optimists and even accuse them of naivety. And when it comes to Russia, everyone has been taught to be a pessimist.

      Explaining his diplomatic approach, Biden seems to be saying: I start as an optimist and then shift to pessimism when things start to become serious. It is a well-worn strategy in the American tradition. The problem for media like the Times or CNN is that they have designated Russia as the arch-villain in the story. True heroes must never be indulgent with the dragons they are on a mission to kill.

      Historical Note

      During Joe Biden’s jaunt to Europe, the media focused on deciphering his attitude not only toward the enemy, Vladimir Putin, but also to his allies at the G7 summit. None showed an interest in the clues Biden provided of his thinking about the rest of the world. At his June 13 press conference in Cornwall, Biden’s improvised remarks tell a subtle but sad story about his vision of the world. It is fundamentally that of the leader of an increasingly rudderless empire posing as an enlightened democracy.

      Biden began by defining the role of the US and the G7 in these most condescending terms: “Everyone at the table understood and understands both the seriousness and the challenges that we’re up against, and the responsibility of our proud democracies to step up and deliver for the rest of the world.” Perhaps Biden thinks of himself as the equivalent of Jeff Bezos, whose mission is to deliver goods to the rest of the world at a profit.

      The president follows that with this syntactically broken train of thought: “The fact is that we — the U.S. contribution is the foundation — the foundation to work out how we’re going to deal with the 100 nations that are poor and having trouble finding vaccines and having trouble dealing with reviving their economies if they were, in the first place, in good shape.” On one side, there is “the foundation,” the US. On the other, there are 100 helpless, nameless struggling nations. This is Biden’s polite version of Donald Trump’s standard motif: We are the winner and everyone else is a loser.

      He then embarrassingly explains the importance of what he repeatedly calls the “COVID project,” having apparently confused the disease with COVAX, the international program to distribute vaccines to low and middle-income countries. In its transcript, the White House discreetly added COVAX after each mention of “COVID.”

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      Perhaps the most rational and realistic — but at the same time troubling — thing Biden had to say in his speech was what sounds like his promise that “there will be future pandemics.” In other words, he looks forward to new occasions where the US will “step up and deliver for the rest of the world.” He even repeats the promise a few lines later: “And there will be others.”

      After applauding his own effort to impose a 15% tax on corporate profits — which may even lead to more inequality among nations — Biden lauds his Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W) designed to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. To anyone familiar with the history of US marketing, it sounds a lot like Pepsi seeking to dethrone Coca-Cola. At least Biden has his acronym and maybe will soon have a logo.

      In the most embarrassingly stupid moment, which should make professional marketers cringe, Biden describes the B3W strategy: “By harassing the full potential of those who are harassing, we’re going to have to try and change things.” Apart from the difficulty of harassing someone else’s “full potential,” we are left wondering how he could think he is doing a service to needy countries by proposing a policy of harassment. It may be better than a military invasion and decades of drone warfare, but if that’s the best the US has to offer the developing world, it might be better just to stay at home and focus on America’s own infrastructure needs.

      From that point on, his speech, Biden’s syntax and train of thought become even more incoherent, but there is too much to highlight in this short article. More to come next week.

      *[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

      How the G7 Intends to Build the World Back Better

      by

      The US Senate recently demonstrated that the only adhesive capable of uniting the two parties is a good, old-fashioned enemy. Although the Democrats and Republicans continue to bicker over the Biden administration’s infrastructure legislation, they achieved rare accord in passing a major technology bill that directs investment into key sectors of the economy.

      Why the sudden bipartisanship? China. The $250 billion investment into semiconductor production, scientific research, space exploration and the like is intended to decrease dependency on inputs from China and maintain a US lead in critical technologies.

      Does the World Need to Contain China?

      READ MORE

      The Biden administration is now eager to replicate that experience on the global level. At last week’s G7 summit in the UK, the United States again used China as a threat to forge transnational solidarity around a global infrastructure deal. Despite some misgivings from Germany and Italy, President Joe Biden managed to steer the group toward something called the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, which incidentally sounds a lot like Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan. But that slogan itself echoed a catchphrase adopted by the UN in 2015 to characterize its response to humanitarian disasters. So, B3W can sound both authentically multilateral and distinctively Bidenesque at the same time.

      In the face of the global tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change — not to mention the sustained attacks by Donald Trump and other right-wing populists on the global order — it was entirely appropriate for the G7 to come up with a bold approach to addressing global economic inequities in a sustainable manner. Alas, B3W raises as many questions as it addresses.

      For instance, is B3W more than just a fancy name attached to already committed financing and existing institutions like the Blue Dot Network? Isn’t the World Bank supposed to be closing the infrastructure gap between the have-lots and the have-littles? And shouldn’t China be a collaborator in this effort rather than its chief antagonist?

      Improving Upon Belt and Road?

      China launched its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Its aim has been thoroughly Keynesian: to pump money into the economies on China’s borders — as well as some further away — in order to sustain China’s own economic growth. The more these economies are dependent on Chinese financing, Chinese inputs and Chinese know-how, the more they will ultimately contribute to China’s global economic dominance.

      Is China creating some kind of global alternative to capitalism like the Soviet Union’s old Comecon? No, Beijing is thoroughly capitalist in its orientation, though it pushes a version that rubs many laissez-faire purists the wrong way.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Is China determined to use BRI to consolidate an anti-democratic bloc of nations? Although Beijing may well prefer to deal with more predictable partners — and democracies can elect some pretty outrageous wildcards — it is ultimately agnostic about the political governance of its BRI collaborators. There are 140 nations participating in the BRI, including 18 countries in the European Union. For every Belarus and Cuba, there’s an Estonia and a Chile.

      Well, then, isn’t China using BRI to build a kind of covert military bloc? Critics, for instance, have pointed to the deal China negotiated with Sri Lanka around the port it helped to finance in Hambantota. Struggling with loan repayments in 2017, Sri Lanka signed a 99-year lease arrangement with a Chinese firm. Couldn’t Beijing now turn this port into a military base?

      In fact, Sri Lanka continues to own the facility, though the Chinese commercial firm operates much of the port and thus gets much of the profit. Despite US government claims, China is not and doesn’t seem to have any intention of conducting military business at Hambantota. Two Chinese subs entered the port before the 2017 deal, and Sri Lanka has barred such visits ever since.

      The Sri Lankan example has often been used as exhibit A in the case of China’s use of the “debt trap” to advance its global objectives. According to this scenario, Beijing extends loans through BRI, the target country defaults, and China grabs the assets. It sounds plausible. Except that there’s no evidence that China actually operates that way, including in the Sri Lankan case.

      The Belt and Road Initiative has many flaws, to be sure. It has facilitated large-scale corruption, for instance, in Malaysia. It has promoted dirty energy, including 240 coal projects and billions of dollars in oil and gas investments.

      But it’s not as if China is the only country with dirty hands. Corruption is endemic in infrastructure projects, accounting for as much as 45% of construction costs. And when it comes to fossil fuels, the US was the largest oil exporter in the world last year as well as the fourth-largest exporter of coal.

      So, why did the G7 think it was so important to come up with an alternative to China’s Belt and Road rather than work with Beijing to build back better together?

      Beat ‘em Rather than Join ‘em?

      The United States likes being number one. The success of Trump’s political campaign and his various hyperbolic slogans testify to the endurance of American exceptionalism. The stridency of these exceptionalist claims, however, introduces a measure of doubt. Front-runners who are anxious about their status generally compensate by raising their voices and thumping their chests harder. In this way, we betray our simian origins.

      China has challenged the US status by growing what is now, measured by purchasing power parity, the world’s largest economy. Thanks to its performance in 2020 during the pandemic, China will likely become the world’s undisputed number one economy sometime around 2026.

      But China is also challenging the global economy by establishing its own institutions parallel to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The BRI, by encompassing so much of the world, is just the kind of grand initiative that number-one economies set up to maintain their dominance.

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      The United States is not so enthusiastic about relinquishing its top status. Ditto all the countries that have hitched themselves to the US economic locomotive. With Trump out of the White House, Washington has eschewed machismo in favor of multilateral and moral arguments against the Belt and Road Initiative: China is throwing developing countries into debt dependency; China is bolstering the power of authoritarian leaders; China is fostering unacceptable work environments including forced labor.

      Those criticisms ring hollow. The developing world is already in debt dependency to the G7 and its financial institutions. The World Bank and IMF worked closely with dictators for decades. Western corporations long turned a blind eye to horrifying working conditions in the countries where they set up operations.

      And the $40 trillion infrastructure gap between have-lots and have-littles that B3W is supposed to bridge? It’s because of this gap that China was so successful in reaching out to the Global South in the first place. In charge of the global economy since 1945, the richest countries failed miserably to achieve a modicum of global economic equity — because that was never really their goal.

      But Can It Help?

      For the sake of argument, let’s put all this history aside. Regardless of the mixed intentions of its backers, can B3W actually help countries that want to catch up to the rest of the world in a way that doesn’t further accelerate the climate crisis?

      The experience of the Blue Dot Network is not encouraging. Established by Japan, Australia and the US in 2019 — after a series of failed infrastructure initiatives like the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor and the Trilateral Partnership — the Blue Dot Network essentially establishes a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for infrastructure deals that meet more stringent requirements around governance, finance, labor conditions and the like. But here’s the problem: The Blue Dot Network doesn’t actually provide credit-hungry countries with access to any new pots of money.

      B3W looks like it might be a similar example of grand rhetoric and few resources. It is articulating the same kind of criteria for investments as the Blue Dot Network. As for the financing, the G7 has promised to mobilize private sector funding — in other words, they aren’t ponying up any money of their own. This is no surprise. The Biden administration is hard-pressed to pass its own domestic infrastructure bill. Fat chance it can get Republicans on board to send similarly earmarked funds abroad, even under the rubric of challenging China.

      Nevertheless, the White House is talking big: “B3W will collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment for low- and middle-income countries in the coming years.” The word “catalyze” sounds very dynamic, but frankly, it’s just a fancy way of saying: We will beg and wheedle and maybe twist an arm or two, but frankly we can’t promise much of anything. As Reuters wryly concluded in its article on the initiative, “It was not immediately clear how exactly the plan would work or how much capital it would ultimately allocate.”

      The bottom line is that the world desperately needs a green B3W. It needs to find a way to close the infrastructure gap by providing the funds and financing for the developing world to leapfrog into a clean energy future. At the moment, the Belt and Road Initiative does not do that. And neither does B3W.

      So, how about it, Washington and Beijing? Why not get together to see if you can turn two wrongs into a right and collaborate on a global Green New Deal?

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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 US Politics

      Officer injured in Capitol attack says Republican ran from him ‘like a coward’

      by

      A Republican congressman “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward” when a police officer injured in the attack on Congress on 6 January saw him and tried to shake his hand, the officer said.“I was very cordial,” Michael Fanone told CNN on Wednesday of his interaction with Andrew Clyde, in a Capitol elevator earlier that day.Fanone, of the DC metropolitan police, was assaulted and injured after he rushed to help defend the Capitol from supporters of Donald Trump who rioted in service of his attempt to overturn his election defeat.Fanone returned this week with a colleague from the US Capitol police, in an attempt to speak to Republicans including Clyde who voted against awarding the congressional gold medal to officers who defended the building.When he saw the Georgia representative, Fanone said, he “extended my hand to shake his hand. He just stared at me. I asked if he was going to shake my hand, and he told me that he didn’t who know I was. So I introduced myself.“I said that I was Officer Michael Fanone. That I was a DC Metropolitan police officer who fought on 6 January to defend the Capitol and, as a result, I suffered a traumatic brain injury as well as a heart attack after having been tased numerous times at the base of my skull, as well as being severely beaten.“At that point, the congressman turned away from me.”Fanone said Clyde “pulled out his cellphone and started thumbing through the apps”, apparently trying to record the encounter. Once the elevator doors opened, Fanone said, the congressman “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward”.Clyde has not so far provided comment.Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, and the Illinois anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger tweeted in support of Fanone.Swalwell said: “To honour Trump, House Republicans will dishonour the police.”Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, told CNN the congressional gold medal vote on Tuesday was “a new low” for the 21 Republicans who voted no.“They voted to overturn an election,” he said. “But in their vote today, they kind of sealed the deal of basically affiliating with the mob. They now are part of the insurrectionist mob.”Clyde made headlines in May when he told a congressional hearing many in that mob on 6 January behaved as if there for “a normal tourist visit”.As the Washington Post reported, pictures taken as rioters searched for lawmakers to capture and kill showed Clyde rushing to barricade a door. More

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      in US Politics

      Michael Wolff to publish third exposé of Trump, covering last days in office

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      Michael Wolff’s third book about Donald Trump, focusing on the final days of his presidency, will be published in July under a provocative title: Landslide.Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote and by 306-232 in the electoral college – a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour against Hillary Clinton in 2016.Trump has pursued the lie that Biden’s victory was the result of electoral fraud – a speech on the subject fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January, leading to a second impeachment trial.Though Trump told Fox News on Wednesday night he “didn’t win” and wished Biden well, he also said the election was “unbelievably unfair”.Wolff published his first Trump tell-all in January 2018, rocking the White House when the Guardian broke news of the book, Fire and Fury.Trump sought to block publication, calling Wolff “a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book”. The reading public ignored him: the explosive exposé sold 1.7m copies in its first three weeks.In 2019 Wolff published Siege, which looked at a “presidency under fire”, tackling topics including Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow.Wolff no longer enjoyed unfettered West Wing access but he did produce a bombshell, again first reported by the Guardian: that Mueller’s team had prepared and shelved an indictment of the president, on three counts of obstruction of justice.Wolff said he obtained the documents from “sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel”. The special counsel rejected his claim, a spokesman saying: “The documents that you’ve described do not exist.”Amid such controversy, and with competitors having flooded the shelves with reportage on the chaotic Trump presidency, Siege did not sell as well as Fire and Fury.Like its predecessor, Siege used Steve Bannon as a major source. By then, however, the far-right provocateur was no longer a White House strategist or even, thanks to his cooperation for Fire and Fury which enraged the president, a major figure in Trumpworld.On Thursday, Wolff’s publisher said he had interviewed the former president. It also said Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, would focus on his “tumultuous last months at the helm of the country”.Out on 27 July from Little, Brown in the UK and Macmillan in the US, the book is based on what the publishers called “extraordinary access to White House aides and to the former president himself, yielding a wealth of new information and insights about what really happened inside the highest office in the land, and the world”.Trump has claimed to be writing “the book of all books” himself. In a statement last week, he claimed he had “turned down two book deals, from the most unlikely of publishers”, adding: “I do not want a deal right now. I’m writing like crazy anyway, however.”After major publishers said they would not touch a Trump memoir, he insisted “two of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses have made very substantial offers which I have rejected”.“That doesn’t mean I won’t accept them sometime in the future,” he said. “… If my book will be the biggest of them all … does anybody really believe that they are above making a lot of money?”Possibly to Trump’s chagrin, those who served him in office have found publishers eager to release their memoirs – and to pay a lot of money to do so.Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, has a “seven-figure”, two-book deal – despite a staff rebellion at Simon & Schuster.Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has a deal for a “definitive” account of the Trump presidency. Broadside Books, a conservative imprint at HarperCollins, has said the book will come out in early 2022. The price of the deal was not disclosed.Last November, shortly after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, Barack Obama published the first volume of a projected two-part memoir that was sold to Penguin Random House with books by his wife, Michelle Obama, for a reported $65m. The former president’s book, A Promised Land, sold strongly.Another former president, Bill Clinton, has moved into fiction. The President’s Daughter – his second thriller, in this case about a president who also happens to be a former Navy Seal – is again written with James Patterson. This week, it debuted at No1 on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestsellers list. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s Binary Battle Against Putin

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      Well before his trip to Europe, Joe Biden’s team worked out the strategy for its messaging that would color everything connected to foreign policy. Vox summed up the drift with this title: “Biden sees his presidency as proving democracy — not authoritarianism — right for the world.” It is now common for pundits to lament that democracy appears to be under threat, though few agree on the nature of that threat.

      Just as during the Cold War, the US understands the marketing advantage of casting its global mission in binary terms. But this time, instead of communism vs. capitalism, the contrast is between democracy and authoritarianism. The average political consumer will immediately see it as a real and significant choice. In reality, there will always be a third and fourth choice, but deliberating on those choices requires serious thinking. The third choice is neither, which means rejecting both as insufficient. The fourth is something in between, which is what most European nations chose following World War II.

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      Faced with the binary choice, nearly everyone besides autocrats themselves will spontaneously choose democracy. But choosing the side that calls itself democratic doesn’t mean that one has chosen democracy. It means one has chosen the side that claims to represent democracy. Like any set of ideas, democracy can be a coherent philosophy accompanied by an ethical system of thought or a mere slogan. In the land of P.T. Barnum and Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, one can never be absolutely sure.

      The Biden administration has clearly understood the advantages of the binary strategy. It is even more compelling in the light of the ostentatious assault on democracy conducted by President Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. The Trump loyalists who complain of a stolen election are clearly a minority, but they remain a significant minority, capable of doing extensive damage. They further weaken the already fragile belief that the US electoral system embodies true democratic values. They offer a glaring example to the rest of the world of virulently anti-democratic behavior. They confirm the image many people have of a culture so obsessed with winning that it could never tolerate the give-and-take that democracy implies.

      Following Biden’s arrival in England for the G7 conference, The New York Times reported that the US president “has made challenging a rising China and a disruptive Russia the centerpiece of a foreign policy designed to build up democracies around the world as a bulwark against spreading authoritarianism.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Authoritarianism:

      The epithet commonly attributed by one political authority, whose power derives from a sense of obedience to a particular group of interests, to another political authority who responds to a different group of interests

      Contextual Note

      In today’s remake of the Cold War — which, in many ways, resembles more the facades of a Hollywood set than it does the decades-long historical standoff between the US and the Soviet Union — Biden desperately needed to define a similar ideological split, even though the entire world had fallen into the global political and economic culture imposed by the US. Guided by his political marketers, the 78-year-old could appreciate that the winning formula from the 1950s and 1960s might still resonate with his countrymen. After all, Trump earned his victory in 2016 by exploiting the implicit nostalgia for the post-war years of prosperity with his motto, “Make America Great Again.” Americans have been conditioned to think of the 1950s as their golden age.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This idea has been brewing in the Biden administration for some time as the president’s way of defining his mission in the world. As the Times remarks, “Mr. Biden has argued that the world is at an ‘inflection point,’ with an existential battle underway between democracy and autocracy.” What was once capitalism vs. communism has become democracy vs. autocracy. 

      It may seem paradoxical that following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, Biden described Putin’s state of mind in these terms: “The last thing he wants now is a Cold War.” This sounds reassuring. Could it mean that the new cold war is over? It is more likely that, once back on terra firma in the US, Biden will return to his theme of the Russian threat, warning that you can never trust Russian leaders. He will certainly boast of his diplomatic accomplishment, lowering the temperature, while seizing on the first occasion that presents itself to accuse Russia of not keeping its promises.

      For the moment, the vibes produced by the Geneva summit appear positive, positive enough in any case to leave The New York Times unsure of how to characterize the meeting. The Times journalists highlight Putin’s assertions of good intentions, but they leave considerable space for doubt about any concrete future outcome when they write: “Mr. Putin said he was ready for talks with the United States, and he voiced unusual optimism about the possibility of achieving results.” “Unusual” was the required epithet, meaning that any hope of actually achieving results should, in the readers’ minds, remain doubtful. The fact that dialogue exists, nevertheless, stands as a very real victory for Biden, if only as a contrast with Trump’s confrontational approach to diplomacy.

      The article concludes by highlighting Putin’s literary culture, who cited Leo Tolstoy to sum up the outcome of the summit. “There is no happiness in life — there are only glimmers of it.” For Americans, who believe in their absolute right to the “pursuit of happiness,” this will be seen as a typical example of Russian fatalistic pessimism, something that Americans, whose culture celebrates optimism, will never accept. It has its literary charm, but it lacks the pizazz of Yankee ambition.

      Historical Note

      Most serious observers today are aware of a deep crisis of Western democracy, a more than two-century-old experiment that sought to demonstrate the possibility of creating and maintaining a government responsive to the people rather than as the privileged tool of a ruling class. The US and other Western countries have recently been faced with the confusion associated with the rise of populism, both on the left and the right.

      Populist movements are suspicious of those who have assumed the habit of governing, whatever their declared political orientation. Not only do they appear self-interested, but they are also seen as the hypocritical puppets of an obscurely perceived oligarchical class. The populists are right to suppose that there is more to the exercise of power than appears in the discourse of the power-wielding politicians. They call it the “deep state” and imagine it as a kind of dark well whose depth is unknown but can only be speculated about.

      Today’s version of capitalism is less industrial than purely financial. That means that power will always be measured by the ability of those who exercise or influence power to pay for what they want. In such a system, can democracy as 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers imagined it still have any meaning? A famous Princeton study published in 2014 describes the reality of decision-making today and calls the political system an oligarchy. “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule.” It notes that “policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans.” It concludes that “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”

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      The Balance website characterizes oligarchy in these terms: “Oligarchs only associate with others who share those same traits. They become an organized minority, while average citizens remain an unorganized majority. The oligarchs groom protégés who share their values and goals. It becomes more difficult for the average person to break into the group of elites.” That would appear to be a more accurate description of US politics today than the romantic idea of Jeffersonian democracy or Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

      Then comes the question: Is an oligarchy authoritarian? No, because there is no single decision-maker or institution capable of defining government policy. But neither is it a democracy. If he wished to be honest, perhaps Joe Biden should characterize the combat for the future as a contest between oligarchy and autocracy. The problem: It doesn’t sound convincing to Americans, who still feel an atavistic attachment to the idea of democracy.

      *[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 Elections

      Trump tells Fox News he ‘didn’t win’ election but doesn’t drop fraud lie

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      Donald Trump has told Fox News he “didn’t win” the 2020 presidential election, and wishes Joe Biden well.The former president made the admission seven months after the election was called for his rival and five months after Biden’s inauguration, during a rambling phone interview with Fox show host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.He did not drop his lie that the Democrat won thanks to electoral fraud.“We were supposed to win easily, 64m votes,” Trump said. “We got 75m votes and we didn’t win but let’s see what happens on that.”Biden won more than 7m more votes than Trump and won by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result Trump called a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Nonetheless Trump has pursued his lie about electoral fraud both in court – where more than 80 lawsuits challenging the result have been thrown out – and in a speech which stoked the deadly attack on the US Capitol by supporters on 6 January.Trump was impeached a second time, for inciting an insurrection, but acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict. GOP senators also blocked the establishment of an independent, 9/11-style inquiry into the attack on the Capitol.Republicans in the states have pursued Trump’s lie about electoral fraud – Arizona, one of the key states won by Biden, mounted a controversial audit of ballots in its most populous county.Republicans in state governments have introduced laws to limit ballot access among communities more likely to vote Democratic, and to make it easier to overturn election results.Trump also told Hannity he hoped Biden “has no problems” in office.“I want him to do well,” he said. “I think the election was unbelievably unfair, but I want this guy to go out and do well for our country.”Biden returned to the US on Wednesday from Geneva, where he met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the end of a European tour.Trump told Hannity Biden “gave a very big stage to Russia, and we got nothing … I think it was a good day for Russia”.Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki in 2018 which most observers thought was a good day for Russia and a humiliating one for the US.Most were outraged when Trump sided with Putin over Russian interference in the 2016 US election. He told Hannity the investigation of that interference and links between him and Moscow “made it difficult to deal with Russia”.He also complained about reporting of the Russia investigation, which produced convictions of numerous Trump aides but which under then attorney general William Barr left Trump untouched despite extensive evidence of attempts to obstruct justice.Biden is 78. Hannity suggested his mental acuity was slipping. Trump turned 75 this week. Though he complained the US under Biden was in a “shocking state”, Trump said that for Biden, “age is not the problem”.Trump retains a firm grip on the Republican party, stoking its attacks on Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus and rescue package and similarly priced infrastructure proposals as dangerously and radically leftwing.“This is far worse than Bernie was ever going to be,” he said. “Bernie Sanders would have never thought to suggest some of the things that are happening right now.”Though the Trump administration fast-tracked development of Covid-19 vaccines and began distribution, Biden accelerated the effort. Though the US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic passed 600,000 this week, most states are in the process of reopening.Trump told Hannity he believed the theory Covid-19 escaped from a laboratory in China. US intelligence agencies are investigating that theory and others.Trump leads most polls of possible Republican nominees for 2024, has announced a return to large-scale public events and has done little to suggest he will not mount another run for the White House.He told Hannity he would “be making a decision on 2024” after midterm elections next year, “but if you look at the numbers, people are liking me more than ever before.“I think the reason is they are watching what is happening to our country, they are watching no energy independence, never has there been a scene like what is happening at the border and the death that is being caused … they are looking at the economy and inflation, looking at interest rates and gasoline prices, and I guess it is making me very popular.”Trump, who bequeathed Biden an economy cratered by Covid-19, has also proved popular with prosecutors, facing mounting legal problems over his business dealings.In Washington, Democrats are demanding accountability for justice department actions under his administration, including obtaining the private records of reporters and congressmen in leak investigations. More