Will Joe Biden Bring the U.S. Down With Him? David Solway ****
Joe Biden does not seem steady on his feet or clear in his mind, and at this stage the same might be said for the country he nominally governs. His unforced errors, some of which have an oddly deliberate ring to them, may have rendered the November midterms and the 2024 presidential election entirely moot. Whether the nation can remain socially, politically, and economically intact even for the next few months is an open question. Biden is a fool, but there is cunning in his folly. A frugal mind may be capable of great wiliness, and blunders may curiously work in an unintentional way to promote intentional policy. Many of Biden’s gaffes and much of his political mischief fit seamlessly into the Democrat plan for the nation. The result may not be wise, but as poet Thomas Gray wittily wrote, “where ignorance is bliss,/’Tis folly to be wise.”
There are two sorts of gaffes or blunders which Biden is prone to make: the kind that are plainly indicative of cognitive decline, and those that dovetail neatly into Democrat, neo-Liberal policy to being in a new world order associated with the Great Reset. This entails the extension of NATO, regime change in Russia, the collapse of the American middle class, and the installation of oligarchic rule in the U.S.
The elements of the master plan are obvious.
- The situation on the southern border is an avowed catastrophe, for which the clueless Kamala Harris has taken much of the blame. She has been roundly condemned for failing in her duty to attend to the security breach, which was her remit, when it should have been obvious that abandoning border security was the purpose all along. Doing nothing, she did her job. Biden’s recent announcement ending the Title 42 Illegal Immigration Rule, which forced the return of more than half of illegal immigrants, is proof positive of the Democrats’ abiding intention to destabilize the nation.
- When it comes to energy, the disaster compounds. Biden’s Executive Order on the first day of his assuming office canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project, and his suspending oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, has ensured that American energy independence has become a thing of the past, that energy prices would soar, and that rampant inflation would devastate the domestic economy. Skyrocketing gas prices are merely the canary in the coal mine. Blaming Russia is a patent “red” herring.
- As for foreign policy, Biden was asleep at the helm, or just as likely he was steering it hard to port rather than sagely to starboard. The U.S.-backed plan to sanction Russia, place an embargo on its oil shipments, seize and block Russian banking accounts and expel the country from the SWIFT international banking and messaging network for its incursion into Ukraine was a misconception of the first magnitude. The result is undeniable: increased inflation on the home front, the strengthening of the Russian ruble, and the isolation of Russia from the West which has enabled it to cement its trade relationships with non-compliant nations like China, India, and the Arab bloc, as well as to encourage it to replace its reliance on SWIFT by increasing its proximity to the Chinese-sponsored alternative, its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS.
As Gita Gopinath, chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, has warned, sanctions threaten to weaken the U.S. petrodollar as the world currency. “We are already seeing that with some countries renegotiating the currency in which they get paid for trade”—with the Chinese yuan making significant strides as a world competitor. Though she argues that the dollar is reasonably safe for the foreseeable future, the writing is on the Great Wall.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Energy Chairman Pavel Zavalny is favorable to friendly countries dealing with Russia in their own fiat currencies or in Bitcoin, and Vladimir Putin now requires “unfriendly” nations to pay for gas exports in rubles via a complex converting mechanism. This is not only political reprisal on Putin’s part, but makes considerable economic sense. Why should Russia agree to accept payment in dollars and euros when its foreign accounts have been frozen? Of what use would dollars and euros be?
In an editorial for The Epoch Times, policy analyst Lee Smith discusses “the rise of a new international order led by China and Russia that has taken shape in opposition to Washington’s leadership.” Beijing and Moscow have formed a muscular partnership, while the U.S., “at least under the Biden administration, has assumed the part of a shrinking suppliant.” Smith has no doubt that “the Biden administration represents the terminal stage of a decaying ruling establishment.” It remains to be seen whether “this class drags the rest of the country with it,” or if a new American leadership can rise to meet the challenge. Author and broadcaster Martin Jacques is deeply skeptical, stating that we now “enter an era in which Europe will be progressively marginalised [and] the United States will experience irreversible decline”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Biden and the Democrats appear to have signed their own death warrant. As Conrad Black writes, “After only 14 months, the Biden administration has insulted almost all of the core elements of its support and discredited all of its principal “progressive” policies … This presidency has failed so badly and so quickly that it has made the Democratic Party synonymous with bad policies,” the victim of its own “demented extravagance.”
A revitalized Republican party acquiring a majority share of the American enterprise—like Elon Musk buying a controlling slice of Twitter and being elected to the Board—might go some way toward rectifying a deteriorating situation. The time is rapidly approaching, not for a hostile, but a friendly takeover.
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