Joe Biden is a lie and a liar.
That opening sentence is supposed to sting. Extra importantly, it’s meant to shatter the joyful caricature that the sitting US president is an antidote – in character, nature and temperament – to his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Biden tried to advertise the massive lie that he’s the antithesis of Trump late final week in a speech that was billed because the opening salvo of his, till now, somnolent re-election marketing campaign.
A cliché-ridden appraisal in The Guardian of Biden’s practised efficiency praised him for “taking the gloves off” in a “fired-up” evisceration of the seemingly Republican nominee for president come November.
“Biden tore into his predecessor Donald Trump as by no means earlier than. He brimmed with anger, disdain and contempt,” a Guardian correspondent wrote approvingly. “If Biden was looking for to jolt his half-conscious 2024 re-election marketing campaign into life, this may occasionally have accomplished the trick.”
Slightly than a “jolt” of urgency and authenticity, Biden’s halting, 33-minute soliloquy mirrored his fraudulent core and lying and the blatant double requirements that govern the institution media’s protection of two supposedly disparate candidates who, reality be informed, are extra alike than in contrast to.
When Trump “tears” into opponents with “anger, disdain, contempt” and signature vulgarity, he’s routinely solid because the authoritarian villain, incoherent with animus and rage, who’s motivated by one impulse above all: vengeance.
When Biden does the identical – minus the profanity – he’s applauded for meting out with the out of date straitjacket of decorum in a essential burst of genuineness that “lots” of fretting Democrats will welcome as an agreeable departure from the “grandfatherly determine predisposed to present individuals the advantage of the doubt”.
So, identical to all these rabid, “deplorable” Republicans, most Democrats apparently favor and are aching to see extra of Mr Hyde than Dr Jekyll of their man, as properly.
Nonetheless, it was Biden’s assemble that America confronted an existential alternative between democracy and dictatorship that reeked of his doddering Trump-like hypocrisy and deceit.
“Immediately, we’re right here to reply an important of questions: Is democracy nonetheless America’s sacred trigger?” Biden requested. “I imply it. This isn’t rhetorical, educational or hypothetical.”
If Biden’s injunction was even remotely honest, then he or his surrogates must reply the next questions which can be – to borrow a phrase – not rhetorical, educational or hypothetical. Oh, and I imply it.
What sort of “democracy” encourages, permits and endorses one other so-called “democracy” to commit genocide – sure, genocide – in opposition to an imprisoned individuals with no technique of escape or refuge from the “killing rage”?
What sort of “democracy” protects and defends one other so-called “democracy” when it enforces a siege depriving thousands and thousands of Palestinian civilians of meals, water, medication and gasoline – triggering rampant hunger and illness?
What sort of “democracy” supplies one other so-called “democracy” with the spigot of weapons and ammunition to show the majority of a densely populated strip into Mars – barren and uninhabitable?
What sort of “democracy” dismisses the need of a transparent majority of its residents who demand that their president work to finish the “killing rage” by negotiating a direct and lasting ceasefire?
The solutions verify that America’s phantom “democracy” isn’t a “sacred trigger” however a jejune delusion – disfigured and corrupted past restore way back.
The nadir of Biden’s pious posturing was his anguished, hyperbolic indictment that Trump did “nothing” to stop an insurrectionist mob from storming the Capitol regardless of having been urged to “act” and “cease” the insanity.
“All the nation watched in horror. The entire world watched in disbelief and Trump did nothing,” Biden stated. “It was among the many worst derelictions of obligation by a president in American historical past.”
Nicely, Mr President, thousands and thousands of enlightened People and far of the planet have “watched in horror” and “disbelief” as you and your craven administration rejected – repeatedly – calls to behave and finish the murderous insanity engulfing the Center East.
As a substitute, you’ve got fuelled the horrors and made certain that they go on and on till the “killing rage” is spent – regardless of the hundreds of youngsters who’ve been killed, maimed, orphaned, traumatised or stay entombed beneath the mountain-range-like rubble.
That, sir, is not only a “dereliction of obligation”. It’s an affront to decency that shocks the conscience and renders Trump’s litany of crimes misdemeanours by comparability.
Biden’s handle mirrored language he used as soon as earlier than when he excoriated Trump for having “created and unfold an internet of lies concerning the 2020 election. He’s accomplished so as a result of he values energy over precept.”
However Biden has weaved his personal “internet of lies” as a result of he additionally “values energy over precept”.
Biden’s lies are extra deadly and pernicious.
He has feigned “concern” concerning the human toll of Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing. In what quantities to a “concern” comedy, Biden and complicit firm have “urged” Israel to point out “restraint”.
“Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many have suffered these previous weeks. And we wish to do every little thing doable to stop hurt to them,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters means again in early November.
A lot for that little bit of performative nonsense, Mr Secretary.
America’s proxy is both not heeding Biden’s fastidiously calibrated qualms or is aware of they’re designed to present the general public impression that he’s “involved” when the self-proclaimed “Zionist” US president doesn’t give a hoot privately that the variety of killed and maimed Palestinians surges each hellish day.
Biden’s duplicitous diplomatic tango contains trafficking within the acquainted fib that he actually, actually desires Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and complicit firm to cease all that ugly, war-crime discuss cleaning Gaza of Palestinians so fanatical Israeli settlers can steal extra properties and land to “make the desert bloom”.
Heavens, no. Biden is “dedicated” to a “two-state” resolution. In the meantime, Netanyahu is busy making certain there’ll by no means be a “two-state resolution” by erasing one of many proposed “states” from the map – actually.
There isn’t any “daylight” between Joe Biden and Donald Trump when Israel invokes its “proper to defend itself” nonetheless it desires to, wherever it desires to, for so long as it desires to.
Any liberal or progressive in any quarter who claims in any other case is a liar, too.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
