JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BIDEN’S CHOICE OF KAMALA HARRIS – WHAT IT MEANS – HER STRENGTHS – TRANSITION TO A NEW GENERATION OF POLITICIANS – OVERALL PROSPECTS FOR THE COUNTRY – I DO THINK TRUMP’S TIME ON STAGE AS STAR OF A LUNATIC PASSION PLAY WILL END, BUT HE HOLDS A VERY POWERFUL OFFICE AND HE COULD START A WAR TO RALLY AMERICANS AND THERE ARE POWERFUL ANTI-CHINA AND ANTI-IRAN INTERESTS WHO WOULD SUPPORT HIM

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS RIOTTA IN THE INDEPENDENT


“By choosing Kamala Harris, Joe Biden just torpedoed Trump's top election tactic with issues of law and order”


Indeed, and she is a good strong choice by many measures, including high intelligence and the ability to charm with her smile. She also is tough, a former courtroom prosecutor, well able to stand up to blowhard Trump or his creepy zombie assistant, Pence.

She may well become the first female President, given the fact of Biden's now often-failing memory, clearly suggesting the onset of dementia.

Some think he won't make it through the first term.

I do believe now that Trump has little chance, given no dramatic developments.

However, he holds a very powerful office, and he just could start a war. Certainly, no principles would interfere since he has none. Perhaps some level heads at the Pentagon would stand in the way, which, if you think about it, is quite a statement to make. But I’m not overly confident. There are powerful pro-war interests at home and abroad in the anti-China and anti-Iran power establishment. And given all the turmoil and crisis in America, judgments are not calm.

In the end, America’s inadequate, antique Constitution makes Trump Commander-in-Chief. So, we have an unbalanced mind with a harshly aggressive personality in charge of the world’s most powerful armed forces, and he has surrounded himself with some of America’s most frightening men. One should perhaps be concerned over the news that Trump wants to replace the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who opposed his rash demand that troops be used against American demonstrators in the streets.

Trump also just appointed the smilingly vicious Elliott Abrams as Special Envoy for Iran, a man convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra Affair (pardoned by H. W. Bush) and with a long history of promoting hostility and violence in international affairs.

Americans, like frightened puppies, cling to the legs of literally any President in time of war. It’s become something of a national habit with all of the country’s many wars. Just look at the case of George Bush after 9/11. There was an extraordinarily inept, blundering, and unintelligent man who gained a heavy following and was handily re-elected.

Whatever happens, don’t expect great change in America’s many horrors, especially those abroad. The wars and coups and bombings will go on. They are just part of what America does. Empires are not kind and gentle places. They are brutal, without exception.

And I wouldn’t be too optimistic on the home front either.

Biden is a lifelong party apparatchik. And Harris has no credentials as a progressive. She’ll be out to prove to the power establishment that she, as a woman of color, provides safe hands for the Presidency.

Picking Ms. Harris, for other reasons, is likely the most creative thing Biden has ever done. At least we should see an end to the obscenest political act ever staged in America, the lunatic passion play of Donald Trump.

And a woman of color in high office does provide something hopeful for millions. Although It is important to keep in mind the example of Obama. There were deep currents of hope when he first ran for office, but they were all for nothing as he carried right on with vicious wars and did virtually nothing at home for the people who supported him so passionately.

Maybe Biden sees his term as providing a watershed event in domestic politics with a transition to quite a new generation of politicians.

A new generation, yes, but not a serious force for change. Change, if it comes at all, comes grindingly slow to an imperious, plutocratic state with fanatical beliefs in its destiny and its right to tell others what to do. Powerful people believing themselves to be exceptional do not easily relinquish their power or their beliefs.