Here We Are: Back to “Normal”
Well, Mr. Biden decided to kick off Black History Month with a bang by bombing Somalia! Already, he has begun to rhetorically prepare the general public for a war with Iran as well. The propaganda isn’t even subtle. Congratulations! — those of you who spoke of wanting to go “back to normal” over the past four years, you got your wish, but make no mistake: The status quo you all wanted so badly is nothing more than bloody imperialism.
It has been 26 days since Mr. Biden took office, and children are still being held in cages at the border. There is no excuse. He signed more executive orders on his first day by leaps and bounds than any other president before him. Shouldn’t this have been one of them? What could possibly be preventing him from doing this?
Last month, he revoked Keystone XL operating permits, and environmentalists everywhere gave him credit for this important move — and rightly so. Even I had to give credit to him for this and congratulated him in a letter. However, it went largely unnoticed that, directly afterward he approved 31 new drilling permits, effectively expanding our petroleum dependence overall.
Neoliberal arrogance is such that they think we won’t even notice when talk of $2000 checks becomes talk of $1400 checks, and it’s not even clear if we will get them at all! Biden has also moved to lower the income thresholds required to receive a stimulus check, which would mean many people who got checks previously would not receive them under his administration. The party that once represented the people is showing itself, time and again, to be the morally bankrupt party of corrupt oligarchs.
So, I rolled my eyes when Jill Biden had all those painted hearts with slogans on them on the White House lawn yesterday. Cute, but how about doing something that will amount to material changes for the people who are out here suffering? The pandemic has been going on for a year! We need relief. These kind of empty, performative gestures are so indicative of how neoliberalism keeps us distracted.
They are very good at distracting us. They conveniently began the conversation about $15 minimum wage — the conversation that many people I respect and admire were having twenty years ago — only now that it serves to make them look benevolent, making sure the figure is so hopelessly outdated to be irrelevant (by any proper measure, the federal minimum wage should be $25/hr).
When it was announced that Biden’s Secretary of Defense would be Lloyd Austin, most conversation seemed to center on “representation” and what it signified to have the first Black person in that position, rather than the fact that the man was a Raytheon board member, and still owns a significant amount of stocks in the corporation. What good is representation, when the representative causes actual material harm to people of color? It should come as no surprise that Biden just announced an $85M Raytheon weapons deal for Chile.
Even if you try diligently to remain informed, it is easy to be distracted by the dog and pony show. I was impressed when I heard that Harriet Tubman would be replacing the “American Hitler,” Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill, until I read a tweet by Ashley Stevens (@The_Acumen) who called it a “perversion,” saying, “A woman who was traded as capital becoming the face of capital doesn’t sit right with my spirit.” I realized she was right. There are so many better ways to honor Tubman’s legacy than that.
As many of you recall, the people who bullied leftists into voting for Biden (no compromise whatsoever, just a heavy-handed, moralistic browbeating) relied on the claim that we could nudge him to the left after he was in office, ignoring the fact that no politicians ever become more populist, or more progressive after entering the fold of establishment politics — It just doesn’t happen. The same people are conspicuously silent on the idea of moving him left now, all of them still with blinders on, focusing all their attention on the previous president, whom I don’t have to tell you, no longer holds public office at all. It’s time to move on!
Many of you voted for Mr. Biden largely out of fear, and I get it. The orange menace was scary, but the neoliberal establishment manipulated your fears. There is no point in dwelling in shame over this fact, but I think we can do better. It’s time to start making demands of the Biden administration! If you voted for him under the premise of pushing him left after he gets in office, then get to pushin’.
It’s also time to set our sights beyond status quo politics. This is why I have been following the Movement for a People’s Party. If we are going to move beyond Reaganesque neoliberalism, we are going to have to find new ways to engage in politics entirely. Now that we have returned to the status quo, we can not afford to let things stay this way. Business-as-usual is not sustainable. It is time for us to stop being distracted, and find a better way forward.
