President Biden’s moral spine is quite questionable sometimes. I suppose that’s true of almost any politician.
During the 2020 primaries at one of the debates, Kamala Harris rightly called him out about busing. It was far from being an artful criticism (and missed the modern versions—where we live now, it’s prejudicial to all children because they try to homogenize the local schools, so neighborhood playmates live in separate schools), Biden weaseled out of it, and then bought Harris off by making her his campaign running mate.
Let’s fast-forward to his foreign policy gaffes. The Afghanistan withdrawal was more than a fiasco: US soldiers died, and people were left behind that the Taliban are surely going to torture and murder. I wasn’t against the withdrawal per se, just against how it was done! (I suppose the generals are more to blame. They’d routed the Taliban early on in that war but dragged the war on forever.)
Biden also has trouble confronting fascists. His cozying up to them might not be as blatant as his predecessor’s (Il Duce obviously wants to be one as his recent plea to erase the Constitution shows), but Biden all too often puts political convenience over morality when it suits him. He worked closely with racists, haters, and bigots as a senator. Recently, he’s coddled the autocratic Xi, as he’d done previously with other Chinese leaders. And his standing up to Putin was late-coming.
His worst actions have occurred with the Saudis. He made a campaign promise to not give more weapons to them as retribution for MBS’s murder of the Washington Post journalist Kashoggi. He’s broken other campaign promises, but this is a big one! As if that famous fist bump and providing those weapons weren’t enough to make me puke, he just bought into the Saudis’ obvious ploy of making MBS PM and killed the lawsuit against that Saudi fascist and murderer and his death-squad members who diced up Kashoggi. As Jake Tapper annouced on CNN during November 20’s “State of the Union,” Biden will now carry that stench of complicity forever.
This man should not run for president in 2024! He now lacks the moral authority to be an effective leader. In that he joins Trump and many other American leaders who have sold their souls to coddle autocratic SOBs. The world sees this immoral behavior and asks, “Are the Americans any different?” Some of us are. Biden and Trump and too many others are not. Neither one is the moral leader the US needs!
Perhaps greed, thirst for power, and moral failure eventually characterize all politicians. Maybe their rich backers always look for some Faustian deal with the politicians to keep them on a tight leash. A trip to Washington DC might be like one into hell, the Potomac akin to the river Styx. If so, more than democracy is in danger! The future of human beings is endangered by immoral and incompetent politicians. Not even God will be able to help us!