My sense has been that Biden was serious about being progressive all along. Of all the candidates who ran in the primary, he was probably best positioned to understand the need for nuances but also the urgent need to reassure America’s middling electorate that Democracy can still work.
What Biden said earlier this evening in his speech, with reference to Xi Jinping, is dead on. There’s a very real counter-revolution against the spread of global democracy, which we once thought was inevitable. China and others - others even in what have been democratic countries - are trying to offer authoritarianism as an attractive alternative to democracy’s failings. There’s all of the attention on Russia, and understandably so, but China can inflict the most damage to global democracy, not only be increasingly using its power to destabilize other countries but also by trying to offer itself up as an ‘efficient’ ‘problem solving’ system, where people can rely on government to deal with pandemics and climate change, and offer a comfortable middle class life to their citizens as long as they keep their heads down.
Of course, we don’t help ourselves by scoring own goals, which we did plenty during the last 4 years.
Well this guy lost the race for governor of Texas by making light of the situation by comparing bad weather to rape: “If it’s inevitable,” he said, “just relax and enjoy it.”
Thanks for the follow up, I knew someone had said it earlier but I couldn’t pin it down. I actually thought Bibby Riggs had said it, but while he said many sexist statements this was not one of them. Ah the quotes attributed to Confucius are many.
I’ve read a few different translations of the Analects of Confucius (along with other Confucian works), and I was disappointed that, as with the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, it does not consist of short, pithy adages that drive home a point with a striking image or some wit. In fact, the whole “Confucius say…” line of joke “wise sayings” is a relatively recent invention, starting around 1940 (have a look at “Confucius say” on Google N-Gram and you can see a conspicuous spike there.) This website attributes the start of the trend to columnist Walter Winchell., that was picked up by lots of others as an easy segue into joke wisdom.
The way the sayings invariably begin with the pidgin english “Confucius say” pretty much sums up the background for these sayings.
Here’s the Quote Investigator, by the way, on many supposed quotations of Confucius. These are not the “joke” type, but almost invariably not actually by The Great Philosopher.
In re people losing jobs or elections after saying something ugly: it seems to have become right-wing orthodoxy to frame this as a Terrible Thing (‘cancel culture’ in their current language).
But that weatherman made his ‘if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it’ remark about an EIGHT-YEAR-OLD. At some point you have to transition from defenses on the basis of ‘different tastes’ to a realization that this person has, at best, appallingly-bad judgment.
Having appallingly-bad judgment is not a good selling point for either broadcast-news people or for elected representatives.
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ETA: Which does return us to the American Coup Fallout topic, when it comes to people like Mo Brooks, Josh Hawley, and other encouragers of insurrection. Bad judgment: a problem.
One can only begin to imagine how gleeful Putin is about the prospect of haranguing Biden over “human rights abuses.” Of course Putin will pretend that the criminals who invaded the Capitol were actually ‘peaceful protesters,’ etc.
In other words, Putin will be, as always, totally shameless.
I’m grateful Biden is President, immensely grateful. Nonetheless, I don’t have much confidence in his ability to deal with an open sociopath. Joe always thinks that if he sincerely holds out the hand of friendship, he will get great results.
He really has no way of coping with Putin on an interpersonal level. And I say that even knowing that in their past encounters, Biden DID avoid naivety,* because back then Biden, merely a VP, knew his options were limited.
Now, Biden believes his press. He’s President, and he think that makes a difference. I’m concerned that he overestimates his ability to affect the sociopath.
Not sure what your overall point is. In your ideal world, how would Biden “handle” Putin? I don’t think it matters one way or another. Putin will always do whatever suits him.