God Save the Queen, Man
Joe Biden goes off script and off the rails
Recently, Joe Biden went off script at a gun safety event in Connecticut, concluding his speech by saying, “God save the queen, man.” He also recently boasted of building a railroad from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, among other verbal slips.
I’m not making fun of Joe Biden. I just want to restate what the consensus used to be: that being President of the United States is extremely demanding. It requires physical stamina and, even more importantly, mental acuity and clarity.
Biden is 80 years old. In the words of my dad, who lived to be 86, “It’s tough to grow old.” In the words of a blisteringly honest friend: “You know how they call them ‘the golden years’? Well, they suck.” Clearly, Biden is showing signs of his advanced age. Especially troubling is the apparent decline in his mental acuity. He occasionally looks confused and lost on stage. He tries his best to cover for this, even breaking into a hop or trot to try to show his vigor, but, honestly, he shouldn’t be running for president and another four-year term.
“Whose finger do you want on the nuclear button?” is a question that comes up during presidential elections. I can’t say I trust Joe Biden. Neither do I trust Donald Trump. (Trump’s personal problems are an entirely different story.)
The “choice” of Biden versus Trump is no choice at all. Both are untrustworthy. And if, yet again, those are America’s two leading candidates, we should all recognize how far mighty America has truly fallen.
I agree with all your points. It does seem to me the candidates (Biden/Trump) reflect the end stages of the two modern political parties.
Trump began the destruction of the Republican Party in 2016 by wiping out all the establishment-approved candidates. The modern Republican Party is now near death; the party of Trump is something else - no matter who is the 2024 "Republican" candidate. The futile efforts of people like McConnell, Romney, et. al. seem to me to be an effort to bring back a Republican Party that will then get the funding that has increasingly gone to the Democrats over the last seven years. I don't see it succeeding.
Biden may be the last of the candidates of a Democratic Party that hasn't represented its traditional values or voters in over 30 years (the Clintons started its destruction with their "New Democrats"). The DNC embrace of the Deep State has led to Joe Biden being the only viable candidate of a party that is as desiccated and senile as he is. Approved others on the horizon - Harris, Newsom,Buttigieg - may use platitudes and social issues as a distraction from the same outdated politics, but it doesn't appear they can generate much enthusiasm. None will offer any change.
The Democrats insurgent candidates (RFK Jr and Marianne Williamson) will be marginalized and ignored. Even if they could gain some traction I don't believe it would change much. The forces against them within the Democratic Party are much too strong for the people's voices to matter.
Reform of either of the two traditional party at this point seems hopeless. Outright rejection of both is the right course - but what form that would take isn't clear.
While the president is not actually in charge the way a corporate CEO is, he still is, as Dubya proclaimed, "the decider". Many horrible things that were on the planning board got nixed by various presidents in my lifetime, from JFK (before Allan Dulles got to him) to even bloodthirsty Obama. The MIC people bring actionable options to the president, and he or she decides which option to implement. So while their choices are very limited, they can even decide "none of the above" if they want to really piss off the MIC. So even though they may not be in charge, they have a great deal of leeway as to what gets done and what doesn't. Of course, that doesn't mean the CIA won't do an end run around them (or worse), it just means that when things are going along normally, the president makes the final call. So having a senile president has consequences in terms of how bad the actual implemented policies are (think going to war against Russia in Ukraine, as a good example).