Contrary to tradition Donald Trump was not present at the inauguration of Joe Biden, did not shake his hand, did not handover his responsibilities to a new president
VICTOR LOUPAN, Head of the Editorial Board
The election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States was supposed to be the final round in the struggle of the American establishment against former US President Donald Trump.
The personality, character, behaviour, and rhetoric of the latter were so unbearable for the ruling class of the United States that, immediately after Trump’s election in 2016, he made it his goal to prevent him from sitting in the White House until the end of his presidential term. Discussions of his impeachment began even before the inauguration, and parliamentary fuss with this did not stop over the entire four-year term. Significant efforts of state authorities were deployed for the fight against the enemy, which was proclaimed none other than the legally elected President of the United States.
In the fight against Trump, those who today stand behind Joe Biden and his administration have actually fought, perhaps without realising it, against the presidency as the institution of supreme executive power.
The White House is not just a building. The Oval Office is more than just an office occupied by a person elected for the next four years. Behind all this lies is the almost mystical beginning of democracy in the “City on the Hill”. The US President is not just a choice of an abstract “people”, he is not a nominee of the “dictatorship of the majority” – each state votes for him individually, and small states enjoy certain privileges. In short, the system is complex, archaic, and not entirely democratic. Because the candidate, who has won the election race, may take the office of the President having received arithmetically fewer votes than his losing rival. This is unthinkable by European standards. But in the United States, the president has more than once been chosen not by the majority, but by the minority.
Joe Biden, the newly elected president, entered the White House somehow joylessly. A gray-haired old man in a black mask sat down at the presidential desk, which was too massive for his physique and body constitution, and began to sign decrees. So many of them at once, that he broke the records of all his predecessors. By the end of January 31 decree had already been signed! The issue here is not only quantity, but also motivation. With his overactivity, Joe Biden openly continues to fight against Donald Trump. That is, the winner still continues to fight against the predecessor who has already left his power. It was as if Trump transformed from a visible enemy into an invisible and even more dangerous, motionless and silent giant, whose shadow obscures the horizon of the ruling president.
The fact that Trump has not recognised and, apparently, would never recognise Biden as a winner, is not just terrible from the point of view of “peaceful democracy”, where it is customary to smile affably despite deep hatred for each other, but also personally unbearable for Biden, because he knows that the majority of voters who voted for Trump, and there are 75 million of them, share the point of view of “their president”. Perhaps, this has never happened before in the history of the United States. There were many controversial issues. But in the end, the vanquished recognised the victor’s triumph, thereby legitimising the transfer of power. For example, so did Al Gore, agreeing to finally recognise George W. Bush as the winner. But Trump didn’t go for it. Contrary to tradition he was not present at the inauguration of Joe Biden, did not shake his hand, did not handover his responsibilities to a new president. In fact, he deprived his successor of that solemnity, without which power cannot exist in its entirety.
The sad essence of Joe Biden’s inauguration was captured by none other than the twice-offended Democratic leftist Bernie Sanders. Wearing a mask, slouching over, he sat alone in an apparently uncomfortable chair. The Americans were especially surprised by his knitted mittens, which were very unsuitable for the moment. They were of the kind that grandmothers knit for their grandchildren. Multi-million copies of the photo swamped the Internet with add-ons and improvements, manifestation of custard-pie digital artworks, with jokes and giggles.
Some influential observers and analysts in America and Europe have long speculated about the world order in the context of a weakening US dominance. Such discussions arose even during Bush Jr.’s term, and they got worse under the eight-year rule of Obama and, of course, intensified after the election of Trump, which was not expected by the establishment. But no one could even imagine then, that the establishment itself would begin to aggressively excoriate the presidential power. Moreover, not only the “people’s representatives” having seats in the Congress took part in this process, but also the special services. The FBI, CIA and other structures designed to protect, defend, and preserve power, sometimes openly participated in the persecutions of the elected President Donald Trump.
It is known that the founder and long-term permanent “owner” of the FBI, John Hoover, hated John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. He had such incriminating evidence on them and on their whole family that with all their desire and hatred for him, they could not fire him. Long before that, the same ardent anti-communist Hoover hated the left-leaning Roosevelt and also collected dirt on him and his wife Eleanor, supposedly a lesbian and the mistress of a Soviet intelligence agent.
So, the byzantine politics has always existed near the top echelons of power. But Hoover’s struggles with various Democratic presidents have always remained behind the scenes. And the American press, despite its independence that was much more obvious then than now, did not allow itself to “spit” on the president. Yes, it could criticise him! Or cauterise, yes! But what happened under Trump, no one could have imagined until today. Indeed, during all four years of his rule, the overwhelming majority of the American media condemned the US president almost every day for being “Putin’s agent”, for “Putin having compromising evidence on him”, for the affirmation that “he would not have been elected without proactive support of the enemy’s special services”, and so on. Moreover, not only the yellow press with its low-performance skills took part in this orgy, but also the most respected and influential publications, such as New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, PBS radio, CNN TV channel. With this, the entire campaign was conducted with absolutely no evidence and with an extremely low level of professional responsibility. Never before has the American media sank so low.
Of course, Trump was not a God dandelion. He was both vulgar and ill-mannered, he sunk to the point where he was forced to sue his mistresses from the porn industry, videos with his obscene statements about women were played on radio and television. In short, the supreme power of the United States was enveloped in a thick and fetid fog that has not dissipated to this day, and will not dissipate for a long time.
Because while the American media was slinging mud at Trump, they completely refused not only to investigate, but also to cover the corruption scandal with Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The latter, a former officer, was expelled from the US Armed Forces for abuse of cocaine and weakness for alcohol. Left without work, Hunter Biden started doing business in Ukraine. At that time his father, Joe, was the vice-president of the United States and the curator of Ukraine. With no qualification in oil or gas, Hunter suddenly started making millions. And not only in Ukraine, but also in China. The point here is not whether he is right or wrong, but that the American media generally refused to talk about the scandalous case, believing that its disclosure could harm the presidential nominee Joe Biden and prevent his election.
This purely corruption scheme with suppression of the facts confirms the trend towards disinformation and propaganda long noticed among the American media. That is, precisely those vices for which they condemned the press serving totalitarian regimes in the past.
On the Internet, where unlimited liberalism and unrestricted freedom of speech reigned in the past, the situation became even worse. Censorship and closings of many millions of accounts have become a commonplace. Faceless political and ideological arbitrariness of Internet platforms has turned into Orwellian norms of behaviour, such as “ban is freedom” or “the truth is a lie”. They started closing websites for being a platform for expressing “unacceptable opinions”. And the topics may be very different there: from “dishonest presidential elections” to “doubts about the pandemic”, from “criticism of the Black Lives Matter and antifa movements” to “criticism of leftism at the universities”.
Well-known American libertarian blogger Michael Malice calls this new power technology a “virtual gathering” of high-tech oligarchs and the paragovernmental media that depend on them, the ultra-left driving force of the Democratic Party, the political correctness movement that has taken control of the major universities, the antifa movement, the Black Lives Matter movement and, of course, the so-called “Deep State”. It is this “gathering” that rises above the White House today.
But, like Notre Dame Cathedral in the Middle Ages, the majestic American gathering is surrounded by slum areas, which huddle a lot of people expelled from normal life. Those who are expelled because they think the wrong way, they vote the wrong way. In short, “they are sitting wrong, they are whistling wrong”. The weakness of the new American power technology is that there are lots of people expelled from the “gathering”. They include not only white hardworking people who voted for Trump. There is also a rapidly impoverishing middle class. And due to the catastrophic situation caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, the number of these people will only increase.
Biden has not yet had time to demonstrate his weakness or show his inability to resist developing processes. The point is not even himself, but the fact that anyone in his shoes would be equally powerless. Joe Biden is a consummate politician, but he is an Old School politician. His team looks like Obama won a third term. And since Trump was a reaction to Obama, then Biden’s arrival looks like revenge. But, according to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “you cannot step into the same river twice”, because “all entities move and nothing remains still”.
Revanchism is a terrible disease. While Trump held office, the notorious “Deep State” and enraged Democrats were infected with it. Now Trump and tens of millions of his followers are infected with it. It is especially significant that the Republican Party seems to be completely or almost completely on their side.
This situation is especially dangerous, because there is a wide ravine between the two opposing sides. Contact between them is lost. They look differently even at the most simple things. This is why more and more American observers are analysing the current events as the eve of a civil war. The war which has already begun in the minds and hearts of people.
