The Task of ‘Sleepy
Joe’ is to Put Liberal America Right Back to Sleep
At birth, all of us begin a journey that offers
opportunities either to grow – not just physically, but mentally, emotionally
and spiritually – or to stagnate. The journey we undertake lasts a lifetime, but
there are dozens of moments each day when we have a choice to make tiny
incremental gains in experience, wisdom, and compassion or to calcify through
inertia, complacency, and selfishness.
No one can be engaged and receptive all the time. But
it is important to recognize these small opportunities for growth when they
present themselves, even if at any particular moment we may decide to avoid
grasping them.
When we shut ourselves into the car on the commute to
work, do we use it as a moment to be alone with our thoughts or to silence them
with the radio or music? When we sit with friends, do we choose to be fully
present with them or scroll through the news feed on our phones? When we return
from a difficult day at work, do we talk about the issues with family or
reach for a glass of wine, or maybe binge-watch something on TV?
Everyone needs downtime, but if every opportunity for
reflection becomes downtime then we are stagnating, not growing. We are
moving away from life, from being human.
Dried-out husk
This week liberal Americans reached for that glass of
wine and voted for Joe Biden. Others did so much more reluctantly, spurred on by
the fear of giving his opponent another four years.
Biden isn’t over the finishing line quite yet, and
there are likely to be recounts, court challenges, and possibly violence over
the result, but he seems all but certain to be crowned the next US president.
Not that that should provoke any kind of celebration. The rest of the world’s
population, future generations, the planet itself – none of us had a vote –
were always going to be the losers whichever candidate won.
The incumbent, Donald Trump, miscalculated, it seems,
if he thought dismissing his opponent as “Sleepy Joe” would be enough to damage
Biden’s electoral fortunes. True, Trump was referring to the fact that Biden is
a dried-out husk of the machine politician he once was. But after four years of
Trump and in the midst of a pandemic, the idea of sleeping through the next
presidential term probably sounded pretty appealing to liberals. Most of them
have spent their whole political lives asleep.
Four years ago, however, they were forcibly roused
from their languor to protest against Donald Trump. They grew enraged by the
symptom of their corrupt political system rather than by the corrupt system
itself. For them, “Sleepy Joe” was just what the doctor ordered.
But it won’t be Biden doing the sleeping. It will be
the liberals who cheerlead him. Biden – or perhaps Kamala Harris – will be busy
making sure his corporate donors get exactly what they paid for, whatever the
cost to the rest of us.
Anger and blame
In this analogy, Trump is not the opposite of Biden,
of course. He represents stagnation too, if of a different kind.
Trump channels Americans’ frustration and anger at a
political and economic system they rightly see as failing them. He articulates
who should be falsely blamed for their woes: be it immigrants, minorities,
socialists, or the New World Order. He offers justified, if misdirected, rage
in contrast to Biden’s dangerous complacency.
But however awful Trump may be, at least some of those
voting for him are grappling, if mostly unconsciously, with the tension between
stagnation and growth – and not of the economic kind. Unlike most liberals, who
dismiss this simplistically as “populism”, some of Trump’s supporters do at
least seem to recognize that the tension exists. They simply haven’t been
offered a constructive alternative to anger and blame.
Ritually disappointed
Unlike the liberals and the Trumpists, many in the US
have come to understand that their political system offers nothing but
stultifying stagnation for ordinary Americans by design, even if it comes in
two, smartly attired flavors.
They see that the Trump camp rages ineffectually
against the corporate elite, deluded into believing that a member of that very
same elite will serve as their savior. And they see that the Biden camp
represents an ineffectual rainbow coalition of competing social identities, deluded
into believing that those divisions will make them stronger, not weaker, in the
fight for economic justice. Both of these camps appear resigned to being
serial – maybe ritually – disappointed.
Failure does not inspire these camps to seek change,
it makes them cling all the more desperately to their failed strategies, to
attach themselves even more frantically and fervently to their perceived tribe.
That is why this US election – at a moment when the
need for real, systemic change is more urgent, more evident than ever before –
produced not just one but two of the worst presidential candidates of all time.
We are looking at exactly what happens when a whole society not only stops
growing but begins to putrefy.
Enervating divisions
Not everyone in the US is so addicted to these
patterns of self-delusion and self-harm.
Large swaths of the population don’t bother to vote
out of the hard-borne experience. The system is so rigged against them that they
don’t think it matters much which corporate party is in power. The outcome will
be the same for them either way.
Others vote the third party, or consciously abstain in
protest at big money’s vice-like grip on the two-party system. Others, appalled
at the prospect of Trump – and before him the two Bushes, and before that
Ronald Reagan – were forced once again to vote for the Democratic ticket with a
heavy heart. They know all too well who Biden is (a creature of his corporate
donors) and what he stands for (whatever his corporate donors want). But he is
slightly less monstrous than his rival, and in the US system, those are the
meaningful electoral options.
And among Trump’s supporters too, there are many
desperate for wholesale change. They voted for Trump because at least he paid
lip service to change.
These groups – most likely a clear electoral majority
– could redirect the US towards political, social, even spiritual growth, if
they could find a way to come together. They suffer from their own enervating
divisions.
How should they best use their numerical strength? Should
they struggle to win the presidency, and if so should it be a third-party
candidate or should they work within the existing party structures? What lesson
should they draw from the Democratic leadership’s sabotaging – twice over – of
Bernie Sanders, a candidate offering meaningful change? Is it time to adopt an
entirely different strategy, rejecting traditional politics? And if so, can it
be made to work when all the major institutions – from the politicians and
courts to the police, intelligence services, and media – are firmly in the
hands of the corporate enemy?
Terrible reckoning
There is no real way to sleep through life, or
politics, and not wake up one day – usually when it is too late – realizing
catastrophic mistakes were made.
As individuals, we may face that terrible reckoning on
our death-beds. Empires rarely go so quietly. They fall when it is time for
their citizens to learn a painful lesson about hubris. Their technological
innovations come back to haunt them, as ancient Rome’s lead water-pipes
supposedly once did. Or they over-extend with ambitious wars that drain the
coffers of gold, as warrior-kings have discovered to their cost through the
ages. Or, when the guardians of empire least expect it, “barbarians” – the
victims of their crimes – storm the city gates.
The globe-spanning US empire faces the rapid emergence
of all these threats on a planetary scale. Its endless wars against phantom
enemies have left the US burdened with astounding debt. Its technologies, from
nuclear weapons to AI, mean there can be no possible escape from a major
miscalculation. And the US empire’s insatiable greed and determination to
colonize every last inch of the planet, if only with our waste products, is
gradually killing the life-systems we depend on.
If Biden becomes president, his victory will be a
temporary win for torpor, for complacency. But a new Trump will emerge soon
enough to potentize – and misdirect – the fury steadily building beneath the
surface. If we let it, the pendulum will swing back and forth, between
ineffectual lethargy and ineffectual rage, until it is too late. Unless we
actively fight back, the stagnation will suffocate us all.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for
Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the
Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto
Press) and “Disappearing
Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His
website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/
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