Voting Biden/Harris was not Fighting Trump, it was Fighting Ourselves
“Who needs Nixon when you’ve got Joe Biden? Who needs Trump when you’ve got Joe Biden?” — Jimmy Dore
The issues that have plagued the American people during Trump’s inaugural presidency did not begin in January 2017. Rot in the American government runs deep and can be attributed to leaders who many Americans deem as heroes. From Obama to Reagan to Sanders (yes, Bernie too), the political landscape of the United States is a dirty place, and a Biden/Harris administration will make things more filthy.
Systemic racism, police brutality, xenophobia, Wall Street exploiting the poor — these are not Trump-created problems. Trump’s presidency played a major role in amplifying them, but believing that the author of the crime bill and the self-proclaimed “top cop” are a righteous resistance after months of Black Lives Matter and anti-police violence protests is laughable.
Believing that Joe Biden, who played a mammoth part in the property loss of 9.3 million American families while simultaneously bailing out Wall Street and banks, will give a modicum of care for people facing eviction during the coronavirus pandemic is delusional. The same goes for Harris, who refused to prosecute Steve Mnuchin and Wall Street for illegally foreclosing on CA residents following the 2008 Recession. She was, however, willing to jail and prosecute parents in CA for student truancy — as if poor parents didn’t have enough things to fear in America. Perhaps Mnuchin’s kids had perfect attendance, and Harris couldn’t figure out how to prosecute Wall Street criminals for not skipping trigonometry.
Biden and Harris are draconian tyrants who have lavished in exploiting and endangering poor and working people. Their threats and inhuman follow-throughs have disproportionally impacted BIPOC and their communities. Likewise, their lust for US imperialism has shaped them from homo sapiens to grim reaper-like shadows.
Biden’s authoring of the crime bill, which he is yet to apologize or accept responsibility for, perpetuated the iron-fisted war on drugs. It furthered mass incarceration, helped normalized the term super predator, expanded the death penalty, and incentivized states to build more prisons. All the while, the bill targeted Black Americans.
I am a supporter of the death penalty without the racial justice provision in it
— Joe Biden 6/21/1991
While Biden may have written the crime bill, Harris enforced it. Kamala Harris boasts of the pride her sadistic law and order record brings her. Harris had incarcerated over 1,900 CA residents for marijuana charges as attorney general. Also, she attempted to keep non-violent inmates incarcerated for cheap labor despite court-ordered release eligibility.
Her egregious record as a top cop does not stop at marijuana charges. Harris spearheaded the only known criminal prosecution of undercover journalists in California history. This act spells concern for whistleblowers and journalists given the recent extradition trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published documents that expose United States war crimes via Chelsea Manning, and recent Silicon Valley pushes to censor journalists on social media platforms.
The cloak-and-dagger sting exposed Planned Parenthood leadership of illegally selling aborted fetus organs. Harris, an attorney general at the time, chose to ignore the exposed criminal activity of Planned Parenthood — who had donated over $80,000 to her campaigns. Instead, Harris and CA prosecutors slapped 15 felony charges on the investigation leader, David Daleiden.
It seems that conflicts of interest are a common theme on the Biden/Harris ticket given the recent Hunter Biden-Burisma scandal.
Despite being an active user of the BLM hashtag on social media, Harris has historically shied away from prosecuting killer cops. These occurrences include tiptoeing around the police murders of Ezell Ford in 2014 and Mario Woods in 2015.
In the realm of domestic exploitation, Harris and Biden are seasoned veterans that know how to run point. They are more suited to advancing policy than Trump is and are unabashed and shameless— at least Trump, the buffoon that he is, craves to be appreciated. Their unwarranted likeability is one of the most dangerous weapons in their arsenal.
Trump is critiqued for nearly all decisions he makes, regardless of what they are. His attempts to end wars have been opposed and stalled by a bipartisan Congress for years. Establishment lawmakers like Biden and Harris will unquestionably face far fewer countermeasures from liberal media and the public simply because Donald Trump will not be the one pushing the big red buttons. Consider this, how many anti-Trump people, on the ground, in media, and government, still applaud and revere Barack Obama despite his laundry list of atrocities?
While Donald Trump has hardly come close to the notion of fighting the establishment (instead of draining the swamp, he hired and promoted swamp things), he has been met by public outcry over most decisions — even if it was unclear why the public was doing so. Biden and Harris, even at their most reprehensible moments, will be propped up and met with applause.
The Biden/Harris ticket is sure to be more hawkish and bloodthirsty with regards to direct military conflict. The heightened Democrat-backed Russiagate conspiracy theories of the past four years have steadily normalized the concept of a virtuous war with Russia. However, there is nothing about war that is virtuous — especially not at the nuclear level.
During the Democratic Presidential Debate, when asked about climate change, Kamala Harris managed to twist the topic into a beratement of Trump for not pushing hostility towards other nuclear powerhouses.
As journalist Caitlin Johnstone explained, “Harris is everything the US empire’s unelected power establishment wants in a politician: charismatic, commanding, and completely unprincipled. In that sense she’s like Obama, only better.”
Such a war-centered response to a question about climate change should be a red flag for antiwar advocates. In all likelihood, she will cosign all proposals and acts of war that Biden jostles against humankind — which history has shown to be many.
The Trump administration has quietly paraded imperialism under the noses of Americans who are preoccupied with Trump for tweeting insensitive things. Under Trump, Palestine has been bombed regularly by Israel to enforce a continued apartheid state in the name of Zionism.
Immediately following a port explosion that decapitated the city of Beirut, the Trump administration exploited the tragedy to quell Lebanese resistance and promote regime change.
Julian Assange has been persecuted and imprisoned for exposing war crimes. Trump stepped back from aiding Libya following the US and NATO-backed destabilization of the country, which resulted in an open slave market. The CARES Act was the largest upward transfer of wealth in the history of humankind. US police officers continue to receive anti-terror training from Israeli militant organizations (including 100 of the 800 members of the Minneapolis police department that responded to protests following the murder of George Floyd).
The listed acts of cruelty came directly from Obama and Biden’s playbook (which came from Bush and Clinton and Reagan beforehand). The duo used militarized police against Occupy, as well as Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson. They backed and supported Wall Street throughout the Great Recession. Edward Snowden is still in exile.
In six years they bombed seven countries and won a Nobel Peace Prize — including the now slave state Libya and the destroyed and starving (and continually sanctioned) country of Syria. As reported by The Intercept, “documents show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign, nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans’ direct targets.”
Right now, at the very least, Trump gets called out when the public learns of his injustices. For instance, I did not talk about these crimes when Obama was committing them. My contempt for Trump pushed me to discover, learn, and seek these stories.
Many others have experienced some form of political awakening while living under Trump. While many derive from Rachel Maddow filled television blocks and will cease to exist come the second week of November, others have awoken to look deeper. The first example of the latter that comes to mind is Ryan Knight.
My point being, with Trump, we know what we are fighting and are eager to fight him. As frustrating and evil as he is, the resistance against him has brought working-class people into the fold. Protests, demands, and marches meant something. However, the legitimacy was lost when millions of Americans smiled at the Biden/Harris ticket.
Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris is your friend. Both have actively hurt American citizens and have endorsed far worse damage overseas. For every crime that Trump has committed unscathed, you can bet that Biden and Harris will do the same and receive medals for it.
Martin Luther King Jr. warned of situations like this. He alerted listeners to social moderates and their lack of full commitment towards progress. That is what many of us appear to be today: people who agree with the goal but are unwilling to cosign the methods of action.
Trump needs to go, but maintaining that a Biden/Harris victory is something to celebrate is a scam. Widespread ignoring of this is part of the reason the establishment will never relinquish its dirty power. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be as bad as Trump for BIPOC, poor and working-class people, migrants seeking asylum, and victims of US imperialism. In actuality, I fear they will be worse. Yet, for some reason, we continue singing their praises.
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
— Martin Luther King Jr. | Letter from a Birmingham Jail | April 16, 1963
