November/December  3
Biden is unexciting and past his best but not mad. ‘Vote Joe’
F
OR VILLAGE’S aenda of equality of outcome,
sustainability and accountability, Bernie
Sanders was the best champion.
By comparison, his conservative Democrat
vanquisher Joe Biden is ideologically vague,
compromised, wedded to mid-twentieth-century agen
-
das and lacking timely radicalism. Biden’s persona is
attractively folksy grandfatherly – and Irish-American -
but he is past his best, inarticulate.
Biden’s opponent Donald Trump is post-ideological/
psychotic with no interest in ideas, still less in the ideas
that comprise Village’s agenda.
His persona is self-unaware, crass and bombastic.
He delivers his incendiary lies in repetitive, unyielding
chunks like a fairground barker. Trump is narcissistic to
the point of insanity making him again the most dan
-
gerous candidate President in history.
His paralysed opponents haven’t realised that only
attacks that puncture his – and his supporters - image
of himself ‘Brand Trump’ work – not ones that, for ex
-
ample show him immoral or illiberal.
Trump does not distinguish truth from lies, argument
from abuse or policy from whimsy. Even Reagan and W
Bush regarded themselves as accountable for untruths;
he does not. A self-confessed greedy plutocrat he lies
about his wealth, dodges taxes, abuses women, and
plays with public health. He is incompetent. He takes
no responsibility for anything at all. He expressly says
he takes no responsibility for the, at least 100,000, ex
-
cess Covid-19 deaths, and he has left his prescription
for posterity: “So supposing we hit the body with a tre
-
mendous - whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very power-
ful light... supposing you brought the light inside the
body, which you can do either through the skin or some
other way”.
Worse than his foolishness, he casually incites ha
-
tred. Trump has incited hatred against Muslims, Mexi-
cans and Chinese, and denigrated Black Lives Matter
and victims of police racism. In practice he has reduced
the US’ intake of refugees from 86,000 in 2016 to 11,000
in 2020. Economic immigration is down by 50%.
It’s been reported that 545 children remain separat
-
ed by Trump’s diktat from their parents who have been
deported from the southern border.
Trump has never had clear poli
-
cies, only policy-substitute man-
tras, instincts chief of which - after
self-advancement - is aiding both
the richest and the ordinary white
supremacist.
Nevertheless some of his stu
amazingly, worked out ok.
He has not started any wars or
incited as much violence as might
have been predicted. He has un
-
dermined some international trade, particularly with
China. For Village that has not been a bad thing.
It is fair too to record that Trump has managed the
US economy eectively if explosively - by deregulation
against the common good. According to the Economist
magazine: “GDP growth was somewhat faster in 2017-
19 than it was in either Barack Obama’s first or second
term, according to ocial data. America also did well
relative to other countries…There is clear evidence of an
acceleration in the growth of America’s median house
-
hold income from 2017 onwards”.
While Biden wants to raise taxes on high-income
households – over $400,000 - Trump still aims to cut
taxes for all income brackets – with no budgetary con
-
cern. The deficit for 2020 is over $3tr. The US national
debt is over $27tr.
On abortion, Biden is pro-choice; Trump, on the back
of fake religiosity, is pro-life. Biden would pass a fed
-
eral law that protects a woman’s right to have an abor-
tion so that even if a packed Supreme Court bucked the
Roe v Wade precedent going back almost 50 years, that
right would still exist. Trump aims to achieve a strong
conservative majority in the Supreme Court that would
probably leave the States to legislate on abortion, mak
-
ing it illegal in most parts of the US.
Trump is an incoherent climate denier. He claims
‘It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch... I don’t think
science knows, actually”. In practice US carbon diox
-
ide emissions peaked on Trump’s watch in 2018. They
fell for the last two years, but remain higher than they
were before he took oce. The average American emits
16.56 tonnes of CO2 a year, over twice as much as the
average Chinese or European.
Implementing the fruits of a joint Sanders-Biden
taskforce on climate, Biden’s climate plan has im
-
proved but he supports unsustainable fracking and is a
devotee of the US car industry, albeit moving to electric,
and indeed of his own cherished sports car.
That these two defective candidates compete for the
most powerful oce in the world says more about the
system than it does about the candidates. But most of
all it bespeaks problems with the political culture of
what has passed for a great nation.
Ultimately Biden will take us back to the political
era of his biggest mentor, Obama. This editorial is con
-
sciously and remarkably similar to one in Village from
October 2016 assessing the respective appeals of Hill
-
ary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Biden will disappoint even people considerably less
radical than Village.
Trump’s policies on climate, foreigners and equality;
his iconoclastic geopolitics and his tiny fingers on the
nuclear button; risk taking us back to the stone age.
So, in the unlikely event you have a vote, use it for
Sleepy Joe.
Trustworthiness
Shut up both of you
EDITORIAL
Issue 72
November/December 2020
Chllenging he endemiclly
complcen nd ohers by
he cue promoion of
equliy, susinbiliy nd
ccounbiliy
ONLINE
www.villgemgzine.ie
@VillgeMgIRE
EDITOR
Michel Smih
edior@villgemgzine.ie
ADVERTISING
sles@villge.ie
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Lenny Rooney
PRINTERS
Boylns, Droghed,
Co Louh
VILLAGE IS PUBLISHED BY:
Ormond Quy Publishing
 Ormond Quy Upper,
Dublin 

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