Biden has done more to undermine the US empire in the last 8 months than Trump did in 4 years. Biden is exposing the contradictions of US empire in a way that Trump could never.
If Trump was president, then the mainstream narrative would be that the genocide in Gaza was simply because of Trump and Bibi's leadership. And you know what? Given how past presidents were able to rein in Israel when polite society started sympathizing with Palestinians, it would be believable. Instead, we get to see front and center, how a man that's been at the top echelons of us foreign policy for decades approves and supports genocide. This is the establishment's genocidal war.
In other words, Trump is perceived as an aberration, even when hes just continuing the same US foreign policy that weve been doing for decades. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is still framed as entirely Trump's decision, even though he was just enacting a policy that Biden voted for in the 90s. And of course Biden did nothing to reverse that move, or even try to extract concessions to move peace talks forward.
Biden is damaging the "international rules-based order" in a way that would make Dick Cheney blush. Bush at least tried to put a veneer of international law on the criminal invasion of Iraq. But it appears the US and Israel are ready to burn the UN to the ground in order to carry out this genocide. Trump would be doing the same exact thing, except he would also serve as a scape goat for the liberal order (just get trump out of office, and we can go back to rule-following)
Don't get me wrong, they're both excellent accelerationist candidates. The world is watching two senile, hateful, egotistical vile men fight for control of the empire as the world burns.
This is more internal than international, but another way Biden accelerates the decline is by forcing the rest of the Democratic Party to goose step with him off the cliff. Under Trump they were able to become "the resistance" and present themselves as an anti-fascist party that was fighting back against the fascist turn in the Republican Party. Under Biden those very same people are now supporting genocide and law-and-order policies and protest crackdowns, and now the masses are turning against the Democratic Party.
The US decline will continue regardless of which candidate / branch of its one-party state is in office. I don't believe either of them would manage that decline fundamentally diffrerently.
I think Biden is the accelerationist candidate, but he's a little too good at it (it being- destroying the empire and potentially the whole world in the process).
I don't support accelerationism regardless, but Biden is basically leading the whole west goose-stepping in their crusade against Russia, China, Palestine, Iran, and the multipolar efforts of the entire global south. The extent of his constant escalations abroad is horrifying and I can only expect them to get worse- meanwhile, domestically he's no slouch in further destroying the living standards and material conditions/foundations the empire was built upon, and (arguably) serving better to tear at the fabric of the imperial cores' societies than Trump ever could have (good riddance in that regard, fingers crossed, maybe the US will implode from within rather than explode from without and take the rest of humanity with it).
Frankly- Trump is a horrifying, nasty, murderous SOB- but that's par for the course with western and particularly US leaders. I consider Biden and the neocon establishment that has reached its zenith across the west behind him an infinitely more worriesome beast, however- frankly, other than in domestic pseudo-progressive policy (which even then Biden is lukewarm on- and the horrors he supports abroad, from Banderites to Zionists obviously make him far more than a net negative in this regard as well) I consider Biden to be more corrupt, more unhinged, more destructive, a more effective herald for fascism across the west and within the US itself, and more dangerous than Trump in every other metric by a long shot.
I don't believe either candidate is doing a bad job gutting the US on the inside, though as an outsider my perspective is limited.
On the diplomatic front, absolutely. During Trump's term, most usian "allies" took the dumb shit he did as the temporary acts of some man-child. The corpse of Joe Biden is disproving the myth of the adults in charge in real time. He started a losing war in the Ukraine and now he's practically overseeing a genocide. What's more, he could've let Trump have sinophobia, but he chose to reveal that democrats could be just as sabre-rattling.
At this point anyone who isn't as dignified as Obama is fine though. It's all a race to the bottom with the bourgeois dictatorships and only an articulate, pretty face can mask that, and even that not for long.
Christian Parenti (Michael’s son) says he supports Trump just because at least he’s destructive to NATO and treats the DPRK better than any other American leader.
Both bad takes.
Setting aside the whole issue of how it looks for leftists to say they support Trump, for any reason, the State Department wouldn't even let Trump pull troops out of Syria, so of course they aren't going to let him do anything that would seriously damage NATO. Congress has already passed a law to keep presidents from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO, and you could just as well argue that the war in Ukraine is placing more stress on the organization than any pissy comments Trump made about who's paying what.
With the DPRK, Trump did nothing of material significance. He could wake up tomorrow and go back to calling Kim "Rocket Man." Like with NATO, he'd face intense institutional opposition to any serious change, and he doesn't care enough to try and fight that.
Then there's the whole issue of Trump being widely viewed as an aberration, which means NATO countries will take his yammering less seriously and U.S. decisionmakers will be less likely to view his actions as precedent.
Setting aside the whole issue of how it looks for leftists to say they support Trump
I wouldn’t say I support Trump but there’s a reason the liberal world order despises him, Trump is such a raging narcissist, that he’s willing to destroy American power to help himself.
Also, when Trump was in charge, we had a constant stream of news about terrible shit that US regime does which helped massively raise public awareness of what's happening around them.
This has to help, though you wonder how much. Plenty of libs were radicalized under Trump, but plenty more went back to brunch when Biden won.
The propaganda excuse for American atrocities is that they were isolated incidents, bad apples, unrepresentative of who we are. Even whole eras get whitewashed this way. Trump is so much more buffoonish than any president in living memory that he plays right into that.
Right, and that's the role democrats have traditionally served to create this illusion of a lesser evil option.
I think youre looking at the situation wrongly. Look at it from a class perspective. Both of them are burguese politicians, but Biden represents the top of the class, while Trump is a part a little lower on the ladder. As capitalism decomposes, the upper classes try to eat the lower ones, even among the burguesie. Thats the conflict at hand. Banks trying to eat industry. In a sense, biden is the man of the system, while trump is the lower part of the system trying to defend itself. Biden is a more cohesive option (for capitalism), while trump is the train derailing. Either way, ww3 is what we have down the road. Puting things like that, i think trump is worse for the system, he will fuck up a lot more. As an enemy of the empire, we want it to be governed by the worse (less coehesive) leader.
All that being said, both of them are incompetent dumb fucks and no amount of political skill can solve the capitalism crisis lying under all the political discussion.
Your view of intra class struggle doesn't make sense. Trump is a "little lower on the ladder" only in rhetoric. The executives of all banks and industry might view him as gauche, but he does just as much (if not more) to advance their causes as Biden. And talking about "banks eating industry" is about 50 years too late - nothing to do with trump
The contradictions intra class are always more subtle than between classes, but its an error to underestimate it.
And talking about "banks eating industry" is about 50 years too late - nothing to do with trump
The process is still going on, it didnt end 50 years ago. Trump is the nowdays expression of this
The classic model of petty bourgeoisie being the progenitor of fascism works well in America.
Petty bourgeoisie make up a large portion of the Republican base. Petty bgz themselves are the direct inheritors of the settler ideology and elevated position in society (thus it also includes many poor whites already "demoted" in social status). They feel the contradictions intensify from both sides, workers asking for more, and big bgz taking over. This puts them in a precarious position of becoming workers, so the petty bgz naturally act according to their (privileged) interests and become very reactionary.
An analysis of Trump's attempted coup on Jan 6th reveals the petty bourgeois make up of his supporters. He is a useful tool of the big bourgeoisie to resolve this contradiction.
So I think before attempting to analyze big bourgeois intraclass conflict, it's very important to consider the basic big bgz-petty bgz situation.
The shine job they did on Biden while he was VP in the Obama years really weathered strong. All that "goofy grampa" shit they wrapped him in, and published all over the place, really solidified Biden as America's Grandad, to the point that some people are still looking at him in the same way you might look at your cooky 80+ year old pops at the family picnic. They gave him this aura of stateliness, like he's the Washington Monument come to life. He's been through it all, seen every face of America, he's the golden boy, the old dog, the tough but fair, the heavy hand but soft heart, the elected official equivalent of a mid-90s Ford Ranger, classic like coca-cola, a cool Budweiser on a hot summer night, Fireflies on the Forth of July, you know all that paper thin Americana draped over the face of death.
This is what makes him so effective, and what gives everyone the license to walk beside him. No doubt in my mind, the level of resistance to the genocide in Gaza would be magnified ten times if Trump was in power now, making all the same moves as Biden is now. It's because libs view Trump as "Fascism Manifest". He is the doomsayer, a harbinger of the Apocalypse, and a "threat to democracy", whatever that means to them. His aura is toxic, and liberal progressives wouldn't be seen collaborating with him because he gives up the game too easily. He wears his class interests on his sleeve. Watching progressives line up behind a pro genocide Donald Trump would be far too much cognitive dissonance for the liberal progressive voters to handle. Watching them line up behind Grandpa Joe, however, well, that's just party unity and liberal progressives hunger for party unity.
I think the American institutions are accelerationist, and anyone you get out of that system as leaders would be accelerationists. The heel sets the stage, reads the crowd, establishes clear red lines and invites the masses to cosplay as resistance fighters standing behind the Face. Once the Face takes the stage, in the afterglow of the resistance's victory, the red lines are moved forward quietly. Without this performance, there is no acceleration to be had. Both the Face and the Heel have a vested interested in the show they put on, and they need each other to keep the show going.
