Centrist Victory 2020
In a few weeks, the Electoral College will confirm Joe Biden as the new president of the US.
Trump worshippers will be disappointed that most of the promises the president made years ago have not been fulfilled. (The scene that sums up his achievements perfectly is when he wished Ghislaine Maxwell, with whom he partied often in the past, “all the best”. The elites can carry themselves this way.)
Bernie fans are disappointed because their votes were used to promote a candidate they did not want and politics they do not agree with. What exactly is new about that? The Democratic establishment saw clearly that Kamala Harris, their #1 candidate from the beginning, would not draw the enthusiasm that Bernie Sanders and some of the fresh-faced progressive candidates did. So it did what it did: it made her leave the primary debates early, so that Biden would get the nomination, and then gave her the vice presidency.
Meanwhile, the media are highly aware that their final weeks of click bait about Trump and the last thing he said, tweeted, promised or alluded to are going to be over.
What other stories can they fabricate after January 2021? How will they keep people triggered, worried, attentive, entertained? What other emotional buttons can they push?
Joe Biden is more boring than Donald Trump. Mainstream media know that they have lost all credibility; but at least they had Trump for “theatre” and personality cult.
The show must go on, of course. So what is new about this presidency?
Almost nothing. The political program is almost the same. American voters are predominantly centrists. You knew that already: your own neighbours are probably centrists. Some are more right-leaning, some are more left-leaning, and overall, their values are more alike than not.
So the way you felt in 2018 is how you will feel in 2021.
If you are a hater, you will keep hating the same groups — perhaps a bit more quietly.
If you choose to dedicate your time to love, nothing will prevent you from doing so. Your mind stayed intact too.
Hey, there is a solution for all who believe in the democratic process: it is called a several parties system. The US has a Green Party, a Libertarian Party, and maybe it will have a social-democratic party soon.
Don’t delude yourself about politicians: they are meant to be civil servants. Politicians are not rebels or fountains of wisdom or cultural creatives; they do what the program that they join prescribes.
If you are one of those people who expects a collapse of the system anytime soon, and “can’t wait to see everything crumble”, I can say this: whatever floats your boat. Whatever you think will happen will not happen in the way you think it will happen. The banks and the financial system will stay in place, regardless of what you envision. Ideologies and whole governments disintegrated; and banks prevailed. That should tell you what you need to know.
Just as Donald Trump won the election in 2016 (Hillary R. Clinton got the popular vote, but not the Electoral College) and president Trump was legitimate, so is Joe Biden the next legitimate president. Like it or not and even if you are ambivalent about it, it is better to accept reality than to live in delusion.
Focus your projections and your ability to come up with future scenarios on how you want to live and on what you want to look back on, once you are of a certain age, not on people who come and go on your TV, whose facades, names and faces you know, though nothing else about them.
Life time is precious.
I am not telling you to disengage, because everything is a game of those in power, or because the paradigm we live in is neoliberal and conservative. On the contrary, I am saying: do participate! Do what you can!
Just don’t make enemies of your friends; don’t give your vital energy to delusional thoughts; don’t tell yourself that the lies of the media or alternative media are a foundation for your next steps; and don’t make yourself an expert when you haven’t looked deeply.
My father gave me something to think about. First, he — not a resident of North America — expressed disbelief that so many women and young voters were cheering to Trump in 2020, and I replied: “You know that a lot of young and not so young people are victims of the media they consumed, and that cheering to Trump is the most alive they felt in a long time. They don’t get their kicks from pleasure and from living .. or otherwise. There is plenty of opposional defiant disorder in a certain age group too, and that is how they express it.” He replied: “Every generation had its problems and its own medicine. Even this generation will develop its own solutions.”
13 November 2020
