It’s like deja vu all over again.
The transition from George W. Bush’s presidency to the Barak Obama administration strikingly revealed the partisan hypocrisy of Democratic leaders and the supposedly “liberal” establishment in America.
While Obama not only continued but intensified many of the worst features of the Bush administration (like expanding the drone bombing and assassination programs, extensive bombing in Syria, and destroying Libya, to mention only a few examples) Democratic and liberal leaders, journalists, and commentators fell silent.
Folks who screamed bloody murder when Bush had done similar things, suddenly became mute, offering no criticism at all — not even a muffled guffaw — when Obama did the very same things.
The Democratic/liberal establishment is applying the same double standard today now that Joe Biden has replaced Donald Trump. I fully expect that the Biden administration will continue the same imperialistic foreign policies, the same neoliberal economic policies, and increasingly oppressive domestic policies as would any other member of the entrenched DC establishment.
Here are a few examples and a few prescient predictions from a few thoughtful analysts:
- Biden’s first statement on foreign policy endorses upstart, opposition figure, Juan Guaido, as the president of Venezuela. (I have written many times about US attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Nicolas Maduro; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
- Biden is already in the process of creating new domestic terrorism surveillance laws; see here, here, and here. Listen to this good discussion of Biden’s authoritarian impulses with Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald here.
