Spy Balloons and Machoism in Ukraine
Biden Administration Excels at Distraction, as Inequalities Fester
Way back in 2005 The New York Times in breathtaking fashion reported on President’s George W. Bush’s domestic spying program, which targeted tens of millions of people from specific ethnic groups and included critics of the administration’s much-hyped “war on terror.”
A few decades later and the entire nation, especially its big cities, are under constant surveillance — and the mobile device or computer you’re reading this piece on is also capable of spying on you and is most certainly collecting and tracking your data. Who in 2023 does not believe that we are all spying on another in an array of creepy ways — face it the human populace is dominated by voyeurs.
So when I first read the headline from the neoliberal’s newsletter The New York Times, about a spy balloon over Wyoming or Montana from China, it brought laughter to me, which is rare. I don’t laugh enough.
President Joe Biden, our 80-year-old leader, is from a far different time, a time when being an international toughie was beloved by a “united” populace. Biden also carries with him a long love of law-and-order boosterism. Biden is a centrist Dem if not a Bob Dole Republican at heart.
When one considers Biden’s generation and ideals as this columnist for The Guardian columnist does, it seems the U.S. populace desire elders to take the lead or show us the way.
Indeed, Republican Senate mainstay from Kentucky Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is 81. Almost of half the U.S. Senate is comprised of aging Baby Boomers and of course ailing Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. Good gracious, Sen. Feinstein is nearing 90 and has difficulty functioning in the Senate. Feinstein says she won’t seek reelection, but can she make it until 2024. Look I hope so. She has wonderful health care — the type of health care most Americans will never experience. If Donald Trump is still lumping around, let’s hope that Feinstein retires in fine shape in 2024.
Biden, however, is going nowhere anytime soon because he is addicted to political power, which is why he is seeking reelection.
Does anyone remember former rightwing President Ronald Reagan. He was reelected to a second term in the White House in his 70s. During the last two years of his presidency Reagan rumbled around the White House in a fog of dementia. His annoying wife Nancy was running things.
Biden makes Reagan look young and that’s not good. If Biden were gracious, he would step aside and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to take on Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Instead the nation is treated to ongoing tough guy Joe, who just visited Ukraine to give a loud, rambling speech, and declare Russia would never find victory in Ukraine.
The Biden administration along with a compliant Congress has shoveled billions of dollars in military aide to Ukraine, along with tanks and other armament.
The war in Ukraine is a year old, and The New York Times and most of Congress are compliant boosters of the warring. Outlandish wars, famine, disease rage in African nations, but the Biden administration and warmongers like the Republican Party are obsessed with whiteness of eastern Europe, so screw real tragedies and disasters, and let us demonize Russia. Both centrist Dems and Republicans in Congress pine for a return of the Cold War too.
Economic inequality and inflation have gone unchecked under President Biden. So has the power of police. Biden promised reforms to U.S. policing but has done nothing.
The gross economic inequality helps explain some success in labor efforts, without Biden’s help. Indeed the Biden administration is taking action to disrupt several labor mobilization efforts in the retail, health care, and rail industries. When Biden was elected president, he declared he would be the most pro-labor president in modern times. Biden pivoted because of centrist handlers and now fights labor efforts and coddles union-buster CEOs like Starbucks’ Howard Schultz.
Political power is fueling Biden’s administration to the great detriment of everyday Americans of all walks of life — think of the train derailment in Ohio and incompetent response from Biden’s transportation secretary or the administration’s lame efforts to beat Covid19.
If Biden remains obstinate in this path he deserves a challenger for renomination, not a coronation. The Democratic Party must be held to higher standards.
