The Nightmare-To-Nap Transition Must Fail

We were deafened by the sound of jubilant crowds singing Hamilton show tunes in the streets, we were dazzled by the sky above Wilmington's Chase Center shrine to capitalism and entertainment lighting up with fireworks spelling J-O-E in garish patriotic hues, we were brought to tears by the president-elect shaking his fist, quoting the Bible, and blessing the great American war machine.

What better way to prove to the whole world, yearning for a return to American supremacy. that our long fascistic nightmare is finally over?

Now comes the hard work. The Democratic leadership's immediate task (besides pivoting from the Putin scapegoat to the AOC/Squad scapegoat to explain its electoral failures) is to start slathering so many globs of greasepaint on the Trump-cracked visage of American hegemony that it would make Hamilton fold and Broadway dim, had they not already closed and dimmed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So the incoming Biden team is raising the curtain on a brand-new website which, if it doesn't put you right to sleep after that weekend champagne brunch you learned that you'd feasted on if you are an MSNBC-watcher or a New York Times subscriber, is at least designed to seduce you into the semi-waking world of a rebranded Normal.  

They're giving us a teaser of their play in four acts: Covid-19, Economic Recovery, Racial Equity and Climate Change. I call it a teaser because there is no actual dialogue or plot. It is still very much in the treatment stage, when they're all sitting around and pitching vague ideas. For now, the audience will just have to exist on the hype and be left guessing whether the final product will be a tragedy or a comedy.

This is the typical gambit of the Neoliberal Players who've been touring the country and the globe with their stale scripts for the past forty or so years. Only the top billings and the costumes periodically change, while the repertory ethos itself stays relatively intact.

Under the working title of "Economic Recovery," for example, we don't learn anything specific about how Joe Biden will tangibly make our lives better. We learn only that Joe Biden believes in you and respects you, as long if you get up every day to work hard to "sustain America."

"Make no mistake. America has been knocked down," he announces, as though people are either too stupid to realize they've been knocked down, or worse, are in complete denial. But he wants you to know that he believes in you anyway!

And really, who needs Medicare For All when all you really need is folksy Uncle Joe - actually an unnamed spokesperson for Uncle Joe -  reassuring you that for him, "health care is personal."

 He believes that every American has a right to the peace of mind that comes with knowing they have access to affordable, quality health care. He knows that no one in this country should have to lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling wondering, “what will I do if she gets breast cancer?” or “if he has a heart attack?” “Will I go bankrupt?” He knows there is no peace of mind if you cannot afford to care for a sick child or a family member because of a pre-existing condition, because you’ve reached a point where your health insurer says “no more,” or because you have to make a decision between putting food on the table and going to the doctor or filling a prescription.

You don't have the right to health care. You only have the right to peace of mind knowing that you can "access health care" by some unknown means, which perhaps includes crawling on your hands and knees to the nearest private equity-staffed emergency room. You at least should have the god-given right to score an affordable sleeping pill to prevent you from worrying about death or bankruptcy or starvation.

Biden's public relations people go on to blather about an imaginary world where everybody who works hard should get a fair shot and a fair shake, which actually skates dangerously close to plagiarizing Barack Obama. And why wouldn't it, since it's probably the same P.R. team that is still churning out this verbiage.

Biden, we are told,plans to tear down the systemic racism that he had such a large part in building with his Crime Bill, by "investing in" Black, Latino and Native American entrepreneurs and helping them to "access" affordable housing. This is in lieu of actually creating a government-run jobs program and building new public housing stock.

To see this agenda through, President-elect Biden will make new, bold investments and speed up the timetable for many of the 10-year investments he has already announced. He has a plan to pay for the ongoing costs of the plan by reversing some of Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and imposing common-sense tax reforms that finally make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.

Beware the neoliberal buzzword "common-sense." It's just a sneaky way of saying that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer while perhaps getting an extra crumb here and there so that they'll still have enough strength left to toil for the rich.

As David Harvey explains in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, this constant touting of "common sense"is simply a gaslighting ploy to create and enforce consent in the targeted populace:

"It is not the same as 'good sense' that can be constructed out of critical engagement with the issues of the day  'Common sense' can, therefore be profoundly misleading, obfuscating or  disguising real problems under cultural prejudices. Cultural and traditional values (such as belief in God and country or views on the position of women in society) and fears (of communists, immigrants, strangers or 'others') can be mobilized to mask other realities. Political slogans can be invoked that mask specific strategies beneath vague rhetorical devices. The word 'freedom' resonates so widely within the common-sense understanding of Americans that it (per Gramsci) becomes 'a button that elites can press to open the door to the masses' to justify almost anything."

As long as the right buzzwords, like "fairness," "common sense," "access, "democracy" and "freedom" are used, all the economic power resting in a few elite hands can gain at least a modicum of, if not popular support, at least popular submission.

We snooze, we lose.

Barack Obama's sonorous voice had the magical effect of anesthetizing liberals, who became so rudely awakened when Donald Trump was elected. Joe Biden has no such oratorical talents, no comparable ability to obfuscate the cruel neoliberal agenda with anything close to Obama's glibness and charm and charisma. 

For such small favors, we should be grateful and optimistic.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are just the impetus we need. They should inspire us to get up every day to sustain and hone our critical thinking skills and anger to unprecedented levels. They actually do make it ridiculously easy, not least because both have a tendency to go off their neoliberal buzzword scripts, revealing their true personalities and agendas.