The problem with Biden: incompetence or support for genocide?

The real problem with Biden is the same as the problem with Lyndon Johnson: the prosecution of a war of mass murder.

Biden prosecuted Assange without relenting, and the Gaza war is a proxy war that he not only is responsible for the US supporting, but is as much America's war as Israel's, and, as with Vietnam, wrongfully so.

This, not his possible ineptness as an individual leader, is the real reason why he should be a replaced. Not just by a Democrat better able to argue down Trump, but also by one who will take this country in a direction more acceptable to those of us on the party's left-wing.

The mainstream approach is aristocratic: it supposes that what we really want in a president is just excellence. Which is effectiveness in using means to pursue ends that do not so much need to be in question. Thus, the Democratic and Republican Parties now simply represent two different styles of authoritarian governance. This is not new, but there are newly enhanced reasons for publicly and vocally disliking and opposing it.

The authoritarian leader treats the nation whose government he heads like a business enterprise. Excellence in business administration is getting things done and well. (Socialist governments can very well do this also, as business operations can be managed in lots of ways: cooperative, non-profit, etc.). Of course, the ultimate in this is fascism. Somewhat less extreme is an 'imperial' presidency at the head of an administrative state. (The right may say it opposes this, but, like the center, cannot really and mostly uses that as rhetoric, though it may try to reduce government through administrative agencies ultimately responsible, theoretically anyway, to the public, with empowerment of private companies responsible only to their own owners and perhaps other 'stakeholders').

The Democrats did something similar in 1973 when the Watergate affair was used to transform opposition to the Vietnam war as the keynote of national politics into a scandal of corruption that psychologized the behavior of the president on behalf of the opposition's call for normalization. The neoliberal era that began around that time (the American-orchestrated Chilean coup happening late that same summer) was also the beginning of the New Age era of the rendering psychological of social problems, including political deviance. We were already in the midst of the rise of the therapeutic state.

Similarly, of course, the dominant official narrative about Vietnam was that it was a "mistake," as the war was not "winnable." While the "hippies" were thought to oppose it (as many did) because they were pacifists. But in fact of course the US government was not mistaken, but wrong. It was morally wrong, the government was pursuing ends that were, and that not for psychological reasons but political ones. It was not the war itself (let alone war as such) that was wrong, but the role of the United States in it.

It is curious that while most citizens of France accept that its colonialist war in Algeria (and, before, it became ‘ours’, Vietnam) was a wrong cause, while many Americans do recognize that the Vietnam war was, officially that is both denied and, even more, forgotten, in the din of voices that are afraid to criticize the national government, identified by patriots with the very nation (generally this is understood to mean territory, language, and a common culture, and also “a” people) that it claims to represent. As if it can no wrong. In fact, patriots always have it both ways, in the irrationalism Freud made famous with his ‘broken kettle example’ (first, I returned it undamaged; second, but it was damaged already when I borrowed it; third, but I never borrowed it), claiming that they love our country because it is morally great, and secondly, that it is right whether it is or isn’t. This only means that the boss must always be obeyed because he is the boss, and if he’s a good boss and not a tyrant, well, that’s lucky for you. In the first case, our nation and its government deserve our love because it essentially wants and does only good things; second, even if it does bad things, you must love it anyway. The fathers deserve our love (identified, wrongly, with obedience); but even if they didn’t deserve it, we must obey them, believe they are right, and because of some demand attributed to love or belonging; you cannot ‘betray’ what you are, and disobedience, or dissent, are betrayal. Because someone with authority has legislated for you who you are and what are your potentialities; and if there is liberty, that again just means you have a good boss, who has granted you some grace. Divine authority is also figured similarly by monarchists; and this figure is monarchical. (A non-monarchical divinity would surely be, à la Spinoza, one of immanence rather than transcendence, being or perhaps nature itself being sacralized rather than a (patriarchal) figure of authority that stands outside and (therefore can also be figured as) above it, the ‘higher authority’ or power, which also supposes this God is a force or power, or perhaps power as such, and supposes this power as domination rather than expression). That means that patriots are children who think of their national society, identified with its government, as an authority over them that they must obey (unconditionally); the government does not belong to them but they to it; the citizen is not defined by the concern for the good of the political community that is republican virtue, but by the obedience to the authority of the ruler that is monarchical and not republican (let alone democratic) at all. If patriotism were concern, this loyalty (obedience) demand would not apply. The nation and its leadership or government, could do wrong or right, and citizens would exhort their representative leadership to do right, and denounce it if and when they consider it wrong. If you cannot do that, than you not a citizen but a mere subject and have no political liberty, whatever private kinds you might happily enjoy.

Now that Assange is free, let's free Biden also from the burdens of office, but not because he is not fit for them. Surely that can be managed, and if not, there is a vice president who is there for that. Replace Biden not (or not only) with a more capable Democrat but one further from America's central problem. Trump is a name of that problem, but it is larger than he is. In search of a better name, "capitalism" comes to mind. Though it may well be that right now we can only hope to improve it. So let's look for a better candidate with that in mind.

The conflict that divided America in the 1960s is not over. What happened was some of the issues were (deliberately, no doubt) misrepresented and displaced.