Turning The TV Off The US Empire Part 1: A Critical Reflection on The US Election
The 2024 American presidential election has now concluded, with former president and now President-elect Donald J Trump defeating the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris.
The re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 does not represent an unprecedented shock to the American political establishment to the extent that his 2016 victory did: throughout the election campaign, polling indicated that the election was a toss-up going into Election Day, with both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump having an equal chance to win the battleground states that Trump ultimately ended up sweeping in his path to the White House. While Trump retained the 70+ million voters that voted for him in 2020, Kamala Harris failed to turn out over 6 million voters who delivered President Joe Biden the White House in 2020. Despite the racial demagoguery that fuelled Trump’s campaign, Trump increased his vote margins slightly enough among traditionally Democratic bases, such as African-Americans, Latinos, and the youth, to win key battle ground states and seal his comeback to office in a searing indictment of the establishment and the Biden administration.
The past 4 years of the Biden administration, of which incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris was the standard-bearer, can be summarized by a single word: war. Joe Biden entered the White House with a legacy as a key figure in the orchestration of the American invasion of Iraq, who in his capacity as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee facilitated the racist and mythical “Global War on Terror.” He brought with him a cadre of neoconservative Iraq-war era warmongerers, Russophobic fanatics with Cold War Era mindsets, committed Zionists and Sinophobes, and a slew of ideologues rhetorically committed to a form of liberal humanitarianism that frames American hegemony and its geopolitical interests in moral terms.
The biggest stain on the Biden’s administration is undoubtedly the genocide in Gaza, in which over 200k Palestinians have lost their lives over the past year. In their staunch support for Israel’s genocide and fanatic warmongering against their neighbors, the Biden administration has ironically delegitimized the in part American-constructed post-WW2 international order, the same order that Biden has portrayed Russia as gravely violating in their 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Reports have emerged that Putin and Zelensky had reached a deal as early as 3 months into the war, which was scuttled by American/NATO figures that sought to send hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russians to death in a proxy war over the geopolitical objective of weakening Russia. Which, regardless of American braggadocio, has so far failed to occur.
Russia has largely defeated the western sanctions regime and achieved economic growth, captured and annexed territory in Eastern Ukraine, and fostered closer ties with BRICS allies and partners in the Global South. Russian geopolitical ties on the African continent have grown in response to the long-overdue rejection of Western/French imperialism by the revolutionary governments of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. The revolutionary governments of these countries and their heads of state have joined together to form the Pan-African anti imperialist Bloc known as the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES), evicting the United States and French militaries from their countries, and inviting in Russian troops to counter the Islamist insurgencies that have wreaked havoc across West Africa.
The Biden administration’s response to this has been to consolidate imperial control over the Western Hemisphere they call their “backyard”. The Biden administration has maintained the strangle-hold of sanctions on Cuba that has resulted in the worst economic crisis since the 1959 Revolution, and recruited the client state of Kenya to lead yet another invasion into Haiti. They have continued to whip South American client states into excluding their neighbors such as Venezuela and Nicaragua from regional economic bodies and arrangements in a campaign of maximum pressure.
Trump’s cancellation of the Iran Deal, massive corporate tax cuts, embrace of Saudi Arabia and Israel, abuse of Cuba, and trade war with China was met with horrified recrimination across the Democratic Party and amongst mainstream liberals in his first term. Yet Biden has refused to return to the Iran Deal, maintained the corporate tax cuts, also embraced Saudi Arabia and Israel, refused to restart the meager Obama-era rapprochement towards Cuba, and implemented his own tariff regime against China. Furthermore, Biden’s aggressive posturing against China in the South Pacific and his failure to re-engage Iran has only laid the groundwork for Trump’s cadre of incoming Sinophobes and Warhawk religious crusaders.
On the domestic policy front, the Biden administration has a track record of failure over the past four years. Despite the global pandemic serving as a historic opportunity to implement universal healthcare, the lofty visions of Medicare-For-All that fueled Senator Bernie Sanders insurgent populist 2020 presidential campaign have been whittled down to price reductions for select prescriptions restricted to seniors. The promising populist vision of universal healthcare, universal college, and a $15 minimum wage that dominated the 2020 Democratic primaries and platform have been effectively vanquished by the party’s corporate and billionaire donor classes.
Despite the historic 2020 George Floyd protest against police brutality and for racial Justice, no criminal justice reforms have been achieved on the national level. Despite the campaign rhetoric about democracy, and the best efforts of the Black liberal elite class to treat voting rights as the main site of political struggle, key Civil Rights Era voting reforms have also failed. Despite the rhetoric about reproductive rights, the Biden administration has overseen the overturning of Roe V Wade and the implementation of abortion bans across many states. Biden oversaw the expiration of COVID-19 relief measures that kicked millions of people off of Medicare, reinstated student loan and rent payments for millions more, and slashed welfare, all while the corporate and businesses sectors enjoyed massive COVID-19 era government loan forgiveness to the tune of billions.
In the wake of all of these failures, the Democratic Party continues to wage war against their own multiracial working class base, gaslighting them over their successes and failures, demanding loyalty against the threat of Republican governance, engaging in repression of radical organizations, and promoting the establishment of Cop Cities. It is no wonder that millions of Democratic voters decided to stay home rather than vote for a party that has routinely failed to deliver on promises, and millions more chose Trump and his nativist and anti-establishment rhetoric out of desperation over their economic immiseration under the Biden administration (and all administrations beforehand).
The domestic policy successes the Biden administration has touted have been investments in infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, the semiconductor industry, and renewable energy tax credits. However, these investments are a fraction of the national GDP, and pale in comparison to the massive sums invested in these same industries by another one of America’s Boogeymans, China. It is no surprise that America is turning to its superior military capabilities and global economic dominance to counter and antagonize China, rather than attempting to be economically competitive or a collaborative partner on the climate crisis.
While Western liberals fret about America eschewing it’s “moral leadership” over the climate crisis or brag about paltry EV subsidies, it has actually been China that has carried this mantle over the past decade, single-handedly responsible for significant investment and advancements in the solar products and renewable technologies that are actually making a global green energy revolution viable. At the same time, America, the EU, & Canada have met China’s advancements with targeted tariffs based on mythical concerns of overproduction and domestic industry protectionism.
An assessment of Biden and Trump’s foreign and domestic policies indicate that there isn’t much difference between the two: the interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon have and will continue to remain Supreme. The difference between the two is largely due to tone, language, and rhetorical flourish, rather than anything material. This election, and American democracy itself, is mostly a spectacle that consumes the energy of the masses, organizers, and those committed to a more radical vision of the world. While engaging in local and state-level elections may be effective in achieving material benefits for communities, the national election is nothing more than a circus of red and blue clown cars vying to be the spokespeople of empire.
However, all hope is not lost in terms of the value of socialist policies and ideals to the American people. Progressive ballot measures over abortion rights and the minimum wage have won in states where Kamala Harris was defeated, indicating that the Democratic Party itself, rather than left-wing social Democratic policies, has been completely discredited by the American people. While the influence and mirage of the American political establishment may be finally waning, the simultaneous rise of a multipolar world and the states, alliances, and resistance movements that make it, are making it clear that the US imperial order is in jeopardy.
Part two of Turning The TV Off The US Empire, will be released December 7th, and will expand on the discussion of rising global multipolarity and the declining influence of the Western, US led, imperial order.
