Written One Year Ago Today, June 8, 2021-- It's Time For Biden To Reset His Strategy--

 

This new introduction, posted on Facebook one year later, puts a bit of perspective on the question of "how did we get here"?

["President Abraham Lincoln was a devoted reader of Shakespeare who immersed himself in the historical tragedies such as Macbeth. I have little doubt that Lincoln would have recognized and reflected upon the coherence between his leadership burden and that facing President Biden today.  And I believe he would consult with the "Bard" for insights on the sort of crisis of tragedy which our Democracy is facing in this year of 2022.. 

 Shakespeare himself might have had a few things to say about our current situation as well. Were he alive and writing, he might remind us that he wrote himself into the play Julius Caesar as "The Soothsayer" in order to warn Caesar to not trust his "old friends" in the Senate and stay away from that place on "The Ides of March."  

That was the "tragedy" of Caesar. He was warned by someone who saw the future to change his path, in this circumstance the refusal to see the treachery which he himself had unknowingly set afoot through his own miscalculations. What unfolded was civil conflict and collapse, instead of following on after his previous victories. 

In Joe Biden's case, unlike Caesar, he is not trying to abrogate too much power, rather he has not used the powers that he already has in a timely or necessary way. Sometimes wars are lost not because of the superior forces of the enemy, but the inability to recognize the enemy in your own camp."] 

--- (LFR- June 8, 2022)

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It's Time For Biden To Reset His Strategy--

June 8, 2021

I think people are missing the point about what Joe Manchin is doing. He is doing what many Republicans and Northern Democrats did in opposing Lincoln's policy vis a vis the Southern States which seceded. There was heavy GOP pressure on Lincoln to negotiate peace with the Confederacy which would recognize their sovereignty, and allow them to keep slavery intact in the name of stopping the bloodshed. 

These were largely selfish and ambitious men whose border States were sympathetic with the goals of the Confederacy, and who put the interest of their States, their individual influence, and their re-election ahead of that of the Nation. Also businessmen, merchants and financiers in Northern States were profiting heavily on the Southern Cotton trade, and worked through people like Treasury Secretary and GOP rival Samuel Chase to sabotage and scheme against Lincoln. 

And of course, Lincoln had the problem of some disloyal Northern Democrats that were nominally Pro-Union, such as the treasonous anti-Lincoln head of the Army of the Potomac, General George McClellan, who never wanted to fight the war and disobeyed Lincoln's orders. (Pictured below)

Manchin is not doing what he is doing out of a misplaced belief in bipartisanship or a naive hope for lessening the Nation's division after the Capitol riot. Its not even so much his ego or desire for power that drives him.  He is out to undermine the Biden administration, period. He wants them to fail. He is not a "centrist". 

Why, you ask does he want Biden to fail? Because he is being stoked by a renegade and pro-fascist element of the Catholic Church which has declared war on Joe Biden and Pope Francis. Manchin is an anti-abortion Right Wing Catholic. He is tied to those Catholic Bishops who are allied with Trump, the Evangelicals, and in some cases QAnon.  He takes money from the "Right to Life" groups and the National Rifle Association. He privately sees the Democratic Party and Joe Biden as murderers of the unborn, and is using the 50-50 stalemate in the Senate to unleash a Civil War in the Democratic Party. He wants to push it further to the Right and force the Progressives completely out to form a new and largely impotent third party.  

The kind of fanatical and almost incomprehensible zealotry you are now seeing from Manchin, which has drawn the praise of the traitorous insurrectionist himself, Donald Trump, does not come from a political perspective. It comes from a stubborn, dogmatic, doctrinal religious outlook. His behavior cannot simply be passed off as your traditional old fashioned corruption and corporate greed alone. 

He believes he is creating a new Democratic Party based on Conservative values, and is allying with those GOP forces that are using him to break up the Democratic Party into warring factions. This was exactly the strategy of the Confederate leaders who believed that fighting a long war of attrition would convince Lincoln's advisors to sue for peace and recognize them as Sovereign, keeping their slavery based "way of life" intact. 

I'm not a religious bigot, nor do I "have a thing" about Catholics or the Church. As people are aware, I have attacked religious fundamentalism across the board as a destructive force, and have no problem denouncing fanaticism in all faiths when it leads to injustice. I do know a great deal about the Church's conflicted history, including their alliance with European fascism in the 20th Century, and their destructive role in fueling the Cold War. Those pro-fascist elements have been brought back to life by Trumpism with a vengeance, in the same way that Trump has weaponized the armed racist militias in the tradition of the KKK. 

That's what is driving Joe Manchin, and is his actual agenda. It is a conscious effort to sabotage the Biden administration and break up the Democratic Party, under the cover of "unity and bipartisanship", because he sees the current Democratic Party as "anti-life". If this seems incongruous or obtuse, have a conversation with a "Right to Lifer" and you will find that within two minutes you will be looking into their eyes and see that "nobody is home". They cannot be reasoned with. 

On a personal note, for the most part, very few people will bring these kinds of things up because it's not considered "safe ground". Most are afraid of offending others and creating serious controversy. So, these issues are avoided, and instead folks will play it safe by posting someone else's meme, or linking to an article which is "vetted or fact checked" in some respectable Establishment press like the New York Times in order to not appear radical, and to repeat arguments that are supposedly "measured".  You will never get anything "measured" from me. As I have said, I am like your smoke alarm. I go off when there is a danger, and make a loud and annoying noise. Don't get mad at your smoke alarm when there's a fire. 

The tragic thing in this situation is that if Manchin defects to the GOP, McConnell becomes Majority Leader again now, and all of the Senate Committees revert to their old Chairmen. It means the administration's agenda is either dead, or deader. And unfortunately, Biden has operated for four months in a self-deluded state, believing that his old GOP Senate partners would work with him. 

Biden should have come out of the gate in full combat mode, and deployed himself against the insurrectionists. They and their sympathizers should have been branded traitors and publicly exposed and humiliated. If Biden had done this, declared political war on Trumpism, many in the GOP wouldn't currently be in fear for their lives, and Manchin would not have so much power. In the name of seeking unity, the administration has unfortunately weakened the foundations of the republic. Lincoln would not have made this tragic error. 

I've said from the beginning that Biden was being misled and ill advised by some centrists in his inner circle like Anita Dunn to seek bipartisanship with the insurrectionists. How many times have you heard me say since last year that Biden is "bringing a knife to a gunfight"?

Forget about killing the fillibuster, that dog don't hunt. It's a dead letter. Biden has to exercise his full Presidential powers to honor his Oath of office. There's a few people who know what that means. Those who don't should go back and read about Lincoln's presidency, again.