…we should not take too seriously the portrayal of Biden as a leader deeply formed in the experience of grief…he is also a Cold War warrior, with a demonstrable inclination to pursue the Democrats’ hawkish orientation towards war where it encounters resistance.
What Sinclair Lewis had warned in It Can’t Happen Here—a Hitler-esque rise to power at the centre of the democratic world—anticipated by all sides from the early days of Trump’s apotheosis, seemed actually to be materialising.
Liberalism and neoliberalism, and thus unthinking economic and cultural globalisation, see only a larger, albeit more diverse, pond over which liberal governance can expand.
While an America oriented to international climate agreements will make an important contribution, ‘Me? A socialist?’ Biden is not very likely to understand or seek to basically reform the hyper-destructive forces of contemporary capitalism.