I honestly thought I'd be happier by Biden's victory, but I'm not getting any pleasure out of it. We're too far from where we were in 2016 to turn the world back to the way it was, we're also too far away from away from any solid ground to turn the whole ship upside down without us all drowning. The best chance by far is a candidate both sides of the party find at least acceptable, and Warren ws, is, the only possible choice. It's highly probably that 1/4 or more of primary voters would never vote for Bernie, and that a different 1/4 or more of primary voters would never vote for Biden. The math just doesn't add up to victory. And even if Bernie endorses Biden, it would now be so easy for a Tulsi Gabbard to get 4 million votes in the general. Even if COVID-19 is every bit as bad as some experts think, would that really, at this point, be enough to focus people's minds on how much still worse things can get, and that, compared to what could happen, we're all still muddling through?
Whether or not one views the other side of any disagreement as unconscionable, democracy is dependent on hundreds of millions of people holding their noses and casting a vote for a people they don't particularly care for, whom they know make promises they won't keep, so that they stop people with a cultish gleam in their eyes from fulfilling promises they do keep, and convincing all their friends, acquaintances, irritants, and even enemies, to do exactly the same thing. All those other things: inspiration, intention, love, those are meant for our personal lives, not for national movements and presidential candidates who, should they ever be elected, will never stop disappointing us. An abstract image we see on our TV's and phones has no idea who we are, and can never truly love us back.
Even at its best, life is kind of miserable; it's a lot of pointless responsibilities, loved ones who let us down, doors of opportunity slammed in our faces, and yes, all kinds of systems calibrated to work against our well-being. And there are two even bigger injustices than all this: one is that the more good times a person has, the less accustomed one is to tragedy and the more those miserable moments feel shocking and hurtful for people for unaccustomed to experiencing injustices than for people who've grown used to it, and the other, still bigger, injustice is that those moments full of personal betrayals and hopes dashed are the good times. The bad times are when the whole thing breaks down and it's every person for themself in a situation of life and death that could go on well past the moment you and everyone you love is killed. It hasn't happened in America in our lifetime, but it's happening in Syria, it's happening in Yemen, it's happening everywhere the Mexican Drug Cartels are located, and yes, it's happening in Afghanistan. Politics is the cure to all that, it's also the cause. Politics is inevitable and necessary, but it is so very dangerous, what choice is there but to be extremely careful about every move we make?
But through all those vicissitudes, there are a few people who have better lives than the rest of us, and seem to go through life with nary a scratch. And almost by definition, they're usually the ones who rise to positions of power, and because they have no idea what life's like for the rest of us, we don't have much reason to trust them. Joe Biden was a Senator from literally (not 'Joe Biden Literally') before his 30th birthday to the day he become Vice President at 66, when he literally (again, not 'Joe Biden Literally') became President of the Senate. That is one side of Joe Biden, the guy who has absolutely no clue how easy he's had it, and therefore sees no reason why he should be circumspect in what he says, and finds it all too easy to walk back his commitments to the people whom he claims to champion.
The other side to Joe Biden is the side that lost his daughter and wife and almost lost his two sons just days before he took the oath of office. Joe Biden talked constantly this past year about a battle for the soul of America, and like a lot of privileged people, he doesn't necessarily realize that the battle for the soul of America is really a battle for his own soul. Biden was not shaped by the sixties, but by the 'early sixties', by the idealism of John Kennedy, and unlike Bill Clinton, I think he really believes in it. He's clearly gone his entire life believing in the adage Clinton coined, 'there's nothing wrong with America that can't be cured by what is right with America.' But that's obviously not true, and that is why I didn't trust him enough to support him.
But at least to a certain extent, life and America are both what we form them into. If Biden becomes President, he at least has a chance to prove some of his belief in America correct. Biden, like America, is now very old, and has a very long, detailed, and complex history. Every generation has new priorities and looks at yesterday's progressives as reactionaries. A generation ago, Biden was an impediment to everything from desegregation, to gay marriage, to women's treatment in the workplace, to financial regulation, and half-a-dozen more things whose problems seem obvious now. Our generation wasn't there, we only have vague memories and the stories of our elders to understand what it was like to live in 1990 and why our parents made the decisions they did, all we know is the effects their decisions have. One day, our children's generation will judge our choices just as harshly for reasons we can't possibly fathom yet.
Biden should not be President, but he's the perfect incarnation of America right now: old, forgetful, and narcissistic, and the fact that he ultimately seems to mean well makes the hypocrisy of his failures that much harder to bear. So therefore, Biden is the perfect emblem of the Left's choice. Would you rather to see America back on the old track: hypocritical and self-aggrandizing, but still the fairest superpower the world ever had, even if there's an inherent injustice in being a superpower who lords it over everybody else; or would you rather chance that we become a dystopia like Syria or Russia? Biden is a representative of an America so old that it remembers what those dystopias were like, they fought those dystopias abroad and won, they still can win against dystopia at home.
Mediocre as Biden often is, mediocre as America often is, you may think that America as it used to be was never good enough to fight for with everything you've got. You're wrong. You may or may not care for this country, but it's the one the vast majority of you have always lived in. And like America, like life itself, there's still a chance to make it a little less disappointing. Against total failure, a little less disappointment is always worth fighting for.
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