It’s no great insight to say that liberal politics today is built on elaborate gestures and performative displays of virtue. The Obama era exemplified its pathology: oodles of empathy, zero underlying change.
Joe Biden
“How did US citizens, all supposedly libertarian somewhere deep down, learn to love Federal bucks, and what does it mean for us?”
Analysis: We are all for ‘Big Government’ now, but what does that mean?
The Trump bogeyman has allowed new space for revisionism about recent foreign policy failures. George W Bush has been effectively rehabilitated, specifically by the liberal press. Some are even wondering: was the Iraq War really so bad?
Source Direct: Bellicose Journalist
While everyone needs a cheer right now, impeachment distracts from the huge political realignments needed to confront successive global crises. That’s why, insofar as we enjoy the spectacle, we will always have that dirty feeling.
Source Direct: Trump Derangement Syndrome
“No matter how dire the crisis has become, [the Saudi coalition] have been able to count on the uncritical political and military support of the UK government. That support must end, and so must have the arms sales that have done so much damage.”
Source Direct: The World’s Other Worst Disaster?
Joe Biden’s inauguration yesterday thus had the feeling of a global event, with all of us vicariously participating. Much of the media, including our state broadcaster, put objectivity to bed and resorted to fawning, like Nicholas Witchell narrating the birth of a Royal baby.
Source Direct: Biden with Me
“Only the course of coming years will tell us if Trump’s experiment in erratic anti-politics in power leaves a legacy of disorientation, or renewal on the right.”
Analysis: The Republicans are down but far from out
“Trumpism will prove rather harder to exorcise from US society. And the Democrats showed little interest in doing so.”
David Jamieson: Impeachment politics won’t solve America’s problems
“Based on past experience, it is unlikely that those who bear some measure of responsibility for the siege of Washington will be forced to answer for it. Who or what exactly has the power to compel them into accountability?”
Sean Bell: It can’t happen here…
Biden doesn’t exactly have a hard act to follow. By many estimations, Trump was the worst American President in history. But what of Biden himself?