John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
Joe Biden wins U.S. presidential election as President
Donald Trump contests some results
It is a good thing for a number of small reasons. I say “small”
because essential foreign policy won’t change. It has been a very long time
since Presidents were able to set major policy. The unelected “Dark State”
(State Department plus Pentagon and CIA) does that.
The same is true of essential domestic policy. It is determined by the long-term Congressional leaders, who are all beholden, as is Biden, to truly wealthy people and corporations.
However, some wiggle room is left for Presidents so they don’t appear hog-tied. That can make a difference in some things, as when Obama was able to implement the Iran nuclear agreement.
The American establishment’s basic set of hostilities and drives will not change. Anyone who doesn’t do the things America wants done becomes a kind of enemy. They’ve even developed an entire vocabulary of ways to call people different degrees of being an enemy, such as the word “adversary” frequently heard now. And the new Pentagon motto, “full-spectrum dominance,” isn’t exactly full of the promise of peace.
The American establishment is in a very dark mood, one that is not encouraging for peace under any President. China has earned extra dislike because the US cannot compete economically with it. It is silly to think that you must lead when you cannot even compete, but that is the attitude of American elites, so long used to having things their way. They want the gold medals without running the races.
The main thing America really stands out for anymore is the extraordinary quantity of weapons it makes and uses and sells to others. That is one of its enduring grievances against Russia, that that country literally has the capacity from its Soviet legacy to obliterate America. A country like that cannot just be ignored while you stomp around the globe ordering people.
One thing is for sure, public civility will return with Trump gone. No more incessant name-calling and insults No more ignoring and insulting experts. No more public insults of different religions and ethnicities and countries. I think many of the political insiders in Washington had grown very weary of that destructive, ugly little-boy performance.
And we won’t have to look at that always-grimacing face. And some of the worst-tempered appointments ever – as Mike Pompeo or Richard Grenell – will be replaced. Truly brutal and graceless men, like Trump himself.
Too late for the Supreme Court though, unless Biden tries the daring deed of “packing the court” with extra appointments, the Constitution giving no rule as to the number of justices, a strategy that is fraught with political risks as the great Franklin Roosevelt discovered when he tried it.
Control of the all-important Senate – it must approve all appointments and treaties – is still not decided.
