Biden was almost my last choice for the nomination in 2020. I am delighted that he won, undisturbed by his age (as you might expect), and convinced he can beat Trump again. But there is one more thing that complicates my thinking about him.
Truman never joined workers on the picket line, Kennedy never joined workers on the picket line, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama never joined workers on the picket line. But Biden has announced that he will join workers on the picket line.
That means an enormous amount to me.
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Even though I'm not American, Biden would have been far from my first choice, too.
But he's probably been the most effective US president since LBJ and definitely the best of my lifetime. (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump, for the curious.)
Bernie Sanders and other Senators have drawn up a resolution expressing regret for the role of the U.S. government in undermining the democratically elected government of Chilean Socialist Salvador Allende and in backing the 1973 coup which led to the 17 year neoliberal dictatorship of Pinochet.
This measure is backed by AOC, who recently visited Chile during the commemoration of the 50 years since the coup, met with President Boric and with other notable leaders of the Chilean left including Santiago mayor, the communist Iraci Hassler.
I suppose that it's positive that Biden walks a picket line for 5 minutes surrounded by secret service men and TV cameras, but I'd begin to have a bit of faith in him when he signs on to Bernie's resolution.
Yes, I know, Biden's better than Trump.
I forgot to add that Sanders's resolution calls for the U.S. to declassify all material relating to its role in the 1973 coup. A lot has already been declassified, but there seems to be more still to be made public.
For the domestic political situation in the US, support for the American working class -- even a gesture like walking a picket line with strikers -- is much more important than signing on to Bernie's resolution. We have a much better chance of avoiding a situation like that which Chile experienced with a stronger union movement, and if white segments of the working class believe that the Democratic party is where there support should go; conversely (?)*, if the Democratic party can return to one that recognizes the importance of policies that (visibly) help members of the working class, support for fascist and near fascist political movements in this country will be less.
Given the importance of the US for events elsewhere in the world (less than most of us Americans may think, but more than is good for the rest of the world), this has reverberations for other countries.
*Not sure if that is the correct word here, but I hope my point is clear.
The United States begins to interfer actively in Chile in the 1964 where they spend millions of dollars (1964) dollars to support Eduardo Frei, a Christian Democrat, against Salvador Allende and Frei wins the election. The support for Frei begins actually with Kennedy and continues with LBJ.
In the 1970 election (presidential terms were 6 years then) the U.S. supported rightwinger Jorge Alessandri who comes in second after Salvador Allende, a Socialist. Nixon and Kissinger, along with Chilean businessmen, begin to plot a coup even before Allende takes office, a coup which takes 3 years to materialize for many reasons.
The coup is bloody, vicious and democracy takes 17 years to return.
It seems that the decent thing to do is to apologize. If Biden is incapable of apologizing, then he's not a decent person in my book. Better than Trump of course,
but no one I can feel any esteem for.
S.W., it might be a matter of bandwidth as well as other folks not having the grace to die already. This was the statement from the State Dept:
https://www.state.gov/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-military-coup-in-chile/
aaall,
Thank you.
It's good that Biden is declassifying more documents about Chile, but the statement did not mention the role of Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA in the coup and the repression which followed.
While it is great that the State Department praises those who worked for human rights during the dictatorship (which includes me), they do not mention that General Manuel Contreras, head of the DINA, Pinochet's secret police, responsible for most of the human rights crimes during the Pinochet dictatorship, was for many years on the CIA payroll, including in 1976 when the DINA assassinated Orlando Letelier, Chilean opposition leader and Ronnie Moffit (one of his co-workers and a U.S. citizen) with a car bomb in Washington, D.C.
If Biden is incapable of apologizing, then he's not a decent person in my book
There are many reasons for incapacity. One is a general inability to apologize. Another is due to a concern with the consequences for goals that are more important to him: reorienting the long run trajectory of US politics and US policies so that they result in a country that is more egalitarian and permits more people to take advantage of personal liberties. If the former, that provides no information about whether Biden is a decent person. If the latter, that would tell us something about Biden's political judgment and not so much about his decency. Denouncing someone as indecent merely because their priorities are not identical to mine is typical of PUMC left wing politics. It serves to announce my decency, that I am a good person, but does little to improve the lives of others or society overall.
I think I value a (seemingly) sincere personal apology from a friend or acquaintance, but I tend to place little value on the sort of apology that now comes so quickly and readily to the lips of those who have been caught out in some public indiscretion--we do, after all, now inhabit an 'apology culture' generated and encouraged by public relations advisors. And I place even less value on the apologies that come from politicians and 'statesmen/stateswomen' for the domestic and foreign misdeeds of governments. I much prefer to wait and see what changes in behaviour become evident once their misdeeds have been made public. (And let's not forget just how hazardous it is to point out the misdeeds of the powerful--I don't think an apology is all that Assange, for one, deserves, from the several governments and judicial systems that are doing their best to silence him forever.)
Here's a broader argument as to why we shouldn't take verbiage, even apologetic political verbiage, seriously. To be sure it's about the dire British situation, not the dire American one, but some may still find it interesting.
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2023/september/25/exposed-keir-starmer-liar-murdochs-man-candidate-mi5-peter-oborne
It turns out that Trump's addressing strikers will be Trump speaking at a non-union business and it was organized by the National Right to Work folks.
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