A Depressing Presidential Political Scene
Ron DeSantis, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and My Despair
Last night, I saw my first TV commercial for the 2024 presidential election and amazingly enough it was for Ron DeSantis. Lucky me. The commercial stressed his working class roots (lots of welding scenes) and especially his military background. Much was made of DeSantis serving in Iraq during wartime and earning a Bronze Star, which surely will impress some viewers who know little of the ways of the U.S. military.
Basically, DeSantis served as a military lawyer; he wasn’t in harm’s way. His Bronze Star was not for valor; it was for being there in Iraq and going along with an often murderous system, for which he “earned” a Bronze Star, the equivalent of the Good Conduct Medal my dad was awarded for his non-combat service during World War II. Except my dad served in the dental corps and had no role in facilitating the killing of often innocent people.
DeSantis, as a JAG (military lawyer), also served at Gitmo (the American prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba), where he may have facilitated torture. Here’s an interesting video on DeSantis’s military career; consider also this informative article about DeSantis at The Baffler by Jasper Craven. There is something off about DeSantis, something creepy. For Stephen King fans, there’s some of Greg Stillson in him, a poseur populist whose tough talk and megalomania could lead us all to a very dark place indeed.
Hopefully, his candidacy will go nowhere and he’ll remain in Florida, fighting the woke forces at Disney.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is running again, though Joe won’t have to face any pesky debates according to the DNC. Biden says his big issue is protecting rights like abortion, but he and Barack Obama failed totally to protect those rights from 2008 until this very day, so how Joe is going to do this now is truly baffling. Biden is also keeping Kamala Harris as his VP despite her unpopularity and lackluster performance.
And then there’s Donald Trump, facing a trial for rape and generally being his usual narcissistic self. Trump seems most focused on raising money for his campaign, or, more honestly, making money for himself, and you have to give the man credit for mastering the craft of the con.
My mind boggles that Biden/Harris are so inept and so much a product of a thoroughly incestuous and corrupted establishment in Washington DC that Trump once again has a decent shot at winning it all.
Yes, the American presidential political scene is thoroughly depressing.
Yes, this moment in our political lives, seems surreal - even though it's in many ways so similar to the last two Presidential runs. (Can the familiar be called 'surreal'? )
It's certainly understandable to be depressed by this situation, given the tremendous, critical needs for principled governance and leadership.
Unfortunately, a system that is itself so abjectly corrupted by the unttempered pursuit of money and the power to increase wealth simply is incapable of producing anything other than corrupted seekers of power and wealth for their own sake.
Biden and the D's can't run on anything other than 'not Trump' (or 'not Desantis'). It'll be more of the same: emphasizing the culture war, ignoring the class war and the state of permanent violence attending to foreign wars and the blow-back into the mass culture of violence.
In fact, today I saw an ABC News clip with the pretty bluntly honest title, "Biden taps into culture wars in reelection announcement" .
Of course. What else can he sell himself on?
Yes, it's dismal. Still, we know that we- humanity and the current life on the planet - were never going to be saved by the electoral / political system we have. This demands we remain clear, spiritually alive, strong in principles and in our intentions., and ready to help our fellow beings in whatever ways we can.
Makes you want to puck. What happened to the America that used to make me proud. The DNC? The RNC. Both are completely nuts. Hope a strong 3 party candidate runs and gives us a hopeful 3rd choice.