Hagiography
Sometimes, bad things happen to mediocre people.
The majority of any defined group will resemble their mean. The formulation of democracy and the popular have served to elevate the significance of the “average person,” and we grant cultural significance to numeric majorities. I specify the numeric majority because sociologists more often use the terms “majority” and “minority” relative to social power, and not simple numbers. But democracy grants decision-making to numeric majorities, though a numeric minority frames the decisions to be made through their abundance of social power.
This can become problematic when accounting for the actual diversity found in social life, through opinion, identity, and alliances. Inevitably there will be other framings and more options than can be accommodated by a vote, or a poll designed to presage election results. What becomes of those? I offer this, from Langston Hughes:
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
—Langston Hughes
This headline caught some attention this past weekend:
Most Americans don’t earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds. May 16, 2025. By Megan Cerullo.
The economy is failing the majority. Despite two years of the Biden administration crowing about how great the economy was doing, the lived experience for 60% of Americans proved this a flat-out lie. 2024 presidential elections analysts all missed this fact. I did not hear one pundit opine that the reason Harris lost was not because she entered the race late, or that because she was a woman in a misogynistic society, or that she was outspent by a combination of Trump’s campaign and unofficial backers: Harris lost because she had to run on Biden’s economic record, and to 6 of 10 Americans (and 9 of 10 in some regions), that was a record of failure.
This was not a case of a sudden turnaround sparked by Trump’s tariffs, the decimation of federal employment rolls, or concerns from the global Bourgeoisie that the American well of economic opportunity has run dry. From 2023, while the Biden administration was trying to figure out why Americans did not believe that the economy (would you LOOK at those stock markets grow!) was recovering nicely from COVID-induced inflation, we have this headline:
60% of Americans are still [sic] living paycheck to paycheck as inflation hits workers’ wages. Published Wed. Sept. 27, 2023. By Jessica Dickler.
There is no other explanation for why the Biden administration made baseless economic claims and told voters not to believe what their paychecks and bank accounts showed. How did Orwell put it? Oh, yeah:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
To the uninitiated, I do not see significant differences among our Ruling Class. They brand themselves through their corporations and political parties so they seem to be in competition and disagreement, but a cursory glance at the economic policies advocated by Democrats and Republicans show both prioritize exponential economic growth under corporate capitalism. What that may do to the environment, laborers, or the general quality of life in America and on the globe is of secondary or tertiary concern.
You can put in environmental regulations and restrictions, or you can remove them all—in either case, their economy will be corporate capitalist. A sustainable economic form will necessarily not exploit nature or degrade the environment for short-term, private gain. There would be no need for environmental regulations, per se, as economic practices would not cause chronic alterations to the climate or landscape. There would be no more economic incentive to “externalize” (i.e., socialize) production costs, as there would be no personal gain to be had by doing so. With equal liability of all to labor, exploitation—to whatever measure workers would not receive a full return of the value they produce—would be universal, rather than suffered exclusively by one class, to the exclusive benefit of the other.
It may seem pie-in-the-sky, until we compare it to how the American ruling class has been operating, with its deep reliance upon convincing Americans that their economic suffering is the best an economy can ever get for them. Don’t be so negative! Things are going great—just look at how much more wealth the top 1% are accumulating.
Now we have been told that Joe Biden has advanced cancer. It allegedly started in his prostate, but has since metastasized to his bones. For some reason, this has spurred people to purge all less-than-fond memories of Biden’s work.
They say not to speak ill of the dead (which I personally don’t find reasonable—if you don’t want people talking smack about you when you are dead, don’t give them reason to through how you lived), so I air this now, as the Biden hagiography is in process.
Joe Biden’s single greatest shortcoming as President, and in his lifelong political career, was his abject failure to bring any member of the coup leadership to justice. He had four years, and allowed his Derpartment of Just Us to fuck around for the better part of two of them. He should have been a meeting with AG Merrick Garland in May, 2021, where Garland was told to lay out the upcoming prosecutions. If the “independent” DoJ did not have anything prepared, Biden should have fired Garland and found a replacement willing to prioritize swift and decisive justice.
I can only surmise that the delay in doing anything about the coup leadership was a game of “give ‘em enough rope.” Biden and DNC operatives reasoned, properly, that Trump was poison, that having him back candidates in the midterms and special elections was a key to Democratic victory. Trump endorsing Herschel Walker’s prop-aided Georgia Senatorial run was a case in point.
So, when we cut to the chase, Biden decided that it was more valuable to him and the Democrats to not prosecute Trump too soon. The definition of putting party before country. It took the public embarrassment of Congressional hearings in the summer of 2022—eighteen months after the insurrection (and three months before the midterms)—before we saw any public actions taken by Garland and the DoJ. Too little, too late. FA/FO.
Then there was Biden’s willingness to carry water for Reagan Republicans, first in the Drug War, and second in aiding Clarence Thomas’ highly-contested Supreme Court nomination.
Joe Biden never met a criminal drug prohibition he did not love, and was a War Hawk on mandatory minimums. His position did not shift while vice-President; it was Obama who sculpted the federal “hands-off” policies that allowed state reforms to become entrenched. Biden did not talk about “legalizing marijuana” until it became a part of his 2020 campaign platform. Of course, we saw no real step toward legalization—those pardons for simple possession on federal land did nothing for those who were convicted of growing or selling marijuana. Marijuana is just as federally illegal today as it was the day Biden assumed the Presidency. Biden’s DoJ did reset the very same crack law disparities he was responsible for creating; so it was not a full failure regarding drug policy. It was a very solid D.
As for Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas was the source of her “me too” experiences, and as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Biden helped normalize Thomas’ behavior by marginalizing Hill’s testimony about Thomas.
Biden’s political career would have likely ended in the Senate, were it not for Hillary Clinton spitting the bit in 2008. Yes, before she proved in 2016 to be the second least-popular presidential candidate of the prior 120 years (and it would have been enough to win, if not for that pesky Electoral College), HRC lost the party nomination to national political newbie Barack Obama, who was in his first Senatorial term. Obama was unlike all other corporate capitalist party presidential candidates who had ever won the nomination, and it was not for his unusual name, and it wasn’t because he was raised by a single parent. But it was the reason he chose the most conservative Democrat he could find: Joseph Robinette Biden.
A brand new type of candidate, with a platform of hope and change, needed an anchor. Someone who was widely-known, respected for his work across the aisle, and who would be a cultural counterbalance. It turned out that Obama was a lot more conservative than his branding, and while he worked to expand civil liberties, he was not going to be addressing the spreading blight of Neoliberal economic policies upon the American working class. While dinging Trump mercilessly at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, the foundation for MAGA had already been laid.
Joe Biden had plentiful opportunities to prevent everything that has happened over the past four months. He did not even have to have won the 2024 election to have done it. When the time comes, we will bury the America Joe Biden allowed to die, while preserving a ruling class that no longer sees a need in majority rule, and for good Goddamned reason.
When the economy fails 60% of the population, you either toss away the economy or you toss away democracy. Guess what they have chosen.