With friends like these…
Democrats will tell you stopping Trump is their top priority. They know you want a survivable country and that obviously Trump will not provide that. What doesn’t get said is the fact that Biden’s habit of normalizing-then-accelerating crises has already taken survivability off the table. I know we’re all supposed to be deifying him right now, but his policies around public safety, climate and public health are literally killing us.
Public Safety
As you may remember, back in 2020 a Black man named George Floyd was murdered by police. The video of his murder set off a global uprising against police brutality. The Democrat answer was to vote for Biden. Many pointed out at the time that Biden’s answer of over-funding police would not only be unhelpful, but would likely make the problem far worse. The Dem reply was that Biden may not be with us on all the issues, but he would be better than Trump, plus he could be pushed and we would all push him together. All of that was wrong.
In 2022 Biden gave police more money than they’ve ever had, and as predicted, police in this country killed more Americans than any other year on record. That is, until the following year, when Biden gave cops even more money, resulting in a new police-murder record. Unfortunately, this trend is unlikely to stop. So far this year, police have already killed 56 more people than they had this time last year. It should also be noted that a third of these killings happen while a suspect is fleeing, and that in 98 percent of all these killings, police go uncharged.
Climate
Two years ago, when Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, the White House began repeating that it’s “the most significant action Congress has taken on climate change in the history of the country.” Versions of this have been oversaturating corporate and social media ever since, and it’s so humiliating. They just keep on and on about that “history of the country” part, like Biden’s out there doing more to fight climate change than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln combined.
First, it’s a climate emergency now, and “climate change” wasn’t even widely recognized as a problem until the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. Democrats have spent the years since then patting themselves on the back for the toothless Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, all the while promoting fossil fuels and fracking. But taking action unprecedented in the history of the country sounds much better than leading one of the two parties that have been financially exploiting a world-ending catastrophe during the three decades since we acknowledged it.
This “historic” climate action also hides the fact Biden’s campaign promise of “No more drilling on federal lands, period” very quickly became record U.S. oil production. All of this should especially worry Mainers, as the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99 percent of the global ocean.
Public Health
In 2020, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The following July, Biden claimed the pandemic was over. At that point, only 70 percent of U.S. adults had been vaccinated. Now, four years later, only 28 percent of U.S. adults polled by Pew claim to be fully vaccinated, and COVID is still this country’s third leading cause of death. What’s worse is that we now know so much more about the disease. For example, COVID has increased heart attack deaths nearly 30 percent in people 25 to 44 years old. COVID is also connected to our rise in infant mortality — the first we’ve seen in decades.
The anti-maskers won. Free tests are gone. Fifteen million Americans – including 38,901 Mainers – have been kicked off Medicaid during Biden’s Orwellian “unwinding process.” Predictably, Biden himself just survived his third COVID infection (physically, if not politically).
Biden won’t be sacrificing us much longer, but his absence won’t stop Democrats’ embrace of fascism. It’s already in Blue strongholds across the country. Atlanta’s Cop City protestor Manuel Paez Terán was killed, shot 57 times by police who prosecutors have since declined to charge. Despite record low crime, New York City has been occupied by the National Guard since March. Democrats denounced a recent Supreme Court decision permitting the criminalization of homelessness. A month later, California Governor and progressive heartthrob Gavin Newsom ordered the elimination of homeless encampments statewide.
I could keep going without even mentioning the bipartisan support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
So, what do you do when the only two political parties are incentivized to work against your survival? Well, the first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one and, unfortunately, we seem very far from that admission.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” on Substack.
