The Glass Limbo

I was watching some random television when some woman appeared and told the interviewer that she was absolutely convinced that if Joe Biden were to be reelected to a second term, "we won't have a country anymore." 

I'm not sure I can connect the dots of her logic, but I've heard complaints on the right that the Biden administration isn't doing enough to secure the southern boundary, and if we don't have boundaries, then we don't have a country. I think that's what concerned her.

Of course, this is propaganda, election-year hyperbole intended to gin up sentiment against the incumbent president, and the Republicans have used this playbook before. In 2013, after Democrats passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the Senate, House Republicans refused to allow the bill to even be debated, not wanting a Democratic president to get credit for immigration reform. To break the stalemate, President Obama asked the Republicans to propose their own immigration bill and they refused, demanding that it was up to Obama and him alone to do something about illegal immigration. So Obama used his executive authority to enact some immigration reforms, and of course Republicans were outraged and called Obama a tyrant for doing exactly what they were demanding him to do.

 

This same exact script is playing out this year. House Republicans are screaming about a crisis at the border, claiming millions of illegal immigrants are crossing the border and we have no idea who they are or where they are. Scary! Tragically, a woman was recently murdered in Athens, Georgia by someone here illegally, and disgustingly, the right has wasted no time pointing the finger of blame at the president and Democrats, claiming her blood is on their hands for not securing the border. They've even found blood on the hands of non-MAGA Republicans, claiming they weren't diligent enough in trying to overturn the 2020 election and allowing Biden to assume the presidency. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have blood on their hands, they claim, for not "finding" the 11,780 votes that Trump requested. It's just a matter of time until they point the finger at me, saying her blood is on my hands for voting for Democrats. 

This election year, Republicans are repeating their theatrics of 2013, denying funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Gaza unless it's tied to strict immigration policy. But when a bipartisan committee came up with exactly the legislation they were demanding, the toughest, most restrictive immigration bill in literally decades, the House Republicans refused to even consider it, declaring it "dead on arrival," so that they'll have scary immigration as a campaign issue on which to run.

So immigration, I think, is why the woman on television was saying we won't have a country anymore. But listening not only to Trump, but to his Republican enablers as well, I truly believe that if they win the election, our country will no longer be recognizable as "America," land of the free and home of the brave. We won't have a democracy but a theocratic autocracy, ruled at the narcissistic whims of a deranged tyrant.

I wish that last sentence was hyperbole, but it's actually something of an understatement. 

An American dictatorship would be horrible, a sad and tragic setback to small-d democratic ideals and freedom. But other countries have survived fascist dictators and recovered, although at terrible prices. Spain recovered from Franco and Italy from Mussolini. Brazil and Argentina have been ruled at various times by military juntas and have survived, although I don't want the United States to be the current version of either country.

The price will be terrible and I don't see how it doesn't involve violence, lots of it and deadly. A Civil War is not off the table, and it won't be a territorial war between states but a cultural war pitting neighbor against neighbor, Christians killing the unfaithful, antifa killing fascists, blacks and whites fighting along color lines while Hispanics and Asians try to pick sides.

Trump is making no secrets that his top priority if elected president would be to exact his revenge on his political enemies, and to jettison democratic norms for a dictatorial approach to rule. Biden promises a sane and rational set of policies, if delivered with the occasional verbal faux-pas. But Trump may win the election because the American electorate views Biden as "old" (not that Trump is much younger) and unfit for office 

The headline this morning in The Guardian announced that President Biden confused Gaza with Ukraine in an announcement that the U.S. would begin air-dropping aid to desperate Palestinians.  What shit journalism! The story here is that the U.S. was circumventing Israeli involvement and taking measures to directly provide desperately needed aid to Gaza, not a verbal gaffe by an aging President.

I truly believe, based on both observations and my own experience, that Biden knows the difference between Gaza and the Ukraine. Under no reasonable scenario, would aid for Palestinians be accidentally delivered to Ukraine, nor would military aid go to the wrong recipient.  Sometimes the mind slips and says the wrong word.  It's happened to me since I was in my 30s, and probably earlier but not noticed. I've frequently been corrected by someone saying, "You mean x" when I apparently said "y." 

"What did I say?," I ask, thinking that I had in fact said "x" (that's how it sounded in my mind). But I'm told that what actually came out of my mouth was "y." It has nothing to do with dementia or forgetfulness, but probably mindfulness. The mind is racing ahead of the mouth, and on auto-pilot, the wrong word slips unnoticed off the tongue.   

It's not confusion of the two things or forgetfulness, although it might appear that way to the casual observer. When you mean to say something's "at work," but part of the mind is thinking about home, you might say "at home" instead. But it doesn't mean that you think that you parked the company car at home and not at the office.          

Biden has suffered a similar problem for years.  Decades ago, even before he was a vice-president, he was sometimes called "Gaffey Joe" because of his tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and make some verbal gaffe. Back in the 90s and 00s, it was just considered Joe being Joe. Now, it's talked of as if it's a dangerous symptom of an unfit leader and a threat to our governance, when it's really the opposite candidate who represents the end of America as we know it.