Biden Can Not Return Things To Normal, Because Trump Is A Normal United States President. That Is The Problem. by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2020-05-14 at 15:26:18 )

Biden Can Not Return Things To Normal, Because Trump Is A Normal United States President. That Is The Problem. by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

"I am with Joe Biden all the way- let us get this country back to where it was before the orange man started destroying it!!!", reads a viral tweet by tennis legend Martina Navratilova that was going around recently.

This idea that Barack Obamas vice president will restore normality to a nation that has been ruined by a highly abnormal president has been a very common sentiment among Democrats for a long time now, and it is silly for a number of reasons.

Firstly, wanting the United States of America to go back to how it was before Donald Trump is wanting the conditions which gave rise to Mr. Trump. This is like landing at the bottom of a well and wishing you could go back in time to a few moments earlier when you were merely falling down the well. Wanting the same status quo austerity, exploitation, oppression and warmongering that made people so angry they wanted an obnoxious demagogue to come knock over the whole apple cart in the first place is just rewinding the same horror movie to the scene right before the scene that is scaring you.

Secondly, this fabled "return to normality" that Joe Biden is supposedly offering is literally impossible, since normality never actually left. Normality never left, because Donald Trump is a very normal United States president.

Do not yell at me, it is true. This is something people who love Donald Trump and people who hate him will be equally vehemently averse to hearing, but it is just a fact: Donald Trump is a normal United States president. If hearing this upsets you your gripe is not with me, it is with reality.

To be clear, this is not a good thing. Donald Trump has kept the bloodthirsty imperialism, corporate cronyism, Orwellian oppression, neoliberal exploitation and police militarization that holds the United States empire together ticking along in basically the same way as his predecessors, in some ways more egregiously and in some ways less so. For all the evils he has helped inflict on our world he still has not done anything as bad as the two wars Bush launched during his first term, or arguably even Barack Obamas destruction of Libya and attempted destruction of Syria during his.

Donald Trump has not even matched Barack Obamas deportation numbers, but he has imprisoned Julian Assange, re-started the Cold War, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from United States-backed genocide, is working to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and Central Intelligence Agency ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, occupied Syrian oil fields with the goal of preventing Syrias reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration, killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes. To name just a few of the ways Donald Trump has continued and expanded upon the depravity of his predecessors just as they did theirs.

Donald Trump is a very normal president, the media just yell about this president a lot more than usual because he puts an ugly face on the horrific normal that was already there. Sure he makes rude tweets and says dumb things and has made a mess of the pandemic response, but by and large when you strip away the narrative overlay Donald Trump has been a reliable establishment lapdog advancing more or less all the same status quo imperialist and oligarchic agendas as the presidents who came before him. There are just a lot of establishment loyalists with a vested interest in spinning the ugliness his oafishness is exposing as caused by and unique to him.

So when they say "Biden 2020, for a return to normal", all they are really saying is "Biden 2020, for a depravity you can sleep through".

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. We can not say exactly what -normal- is; it will still definitely involve military expansionism, mass murder, ecocide, omnicidal cold war escalations, crushing austerity and economic, social and racial injustice. But by golly, it will feel normal."

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. Nothing will fundamentally change, but the media will stop screaming in your face all the time about how freakishly abnormal this particular presidency is."

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. No, not a return to sanity, peace, prosperity, democracy and equanimity in America; America never had those things, so there is no returning to them. We just mean we will return to making it easier for you not to think about that."

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. To when you were able to sleep comfortably through the violence, insanity and depraved psychopathy of the status quo instead of having it unpleasantly drawn to your attention by rude tweets."

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. A return to the days where a competent president makes important decisions in accordance with the will of the electorate. That is right, a return to a fictional fantasy land where you can live in your imagination."

"Biden 2020, for a return to normal. A return to the days when you could happily pretend that freakish, murderous madness spanning the entire planet is normal.”

“Biden or Trump 2020, for a return to normal. Because -normal- never bloody left."

Trump is normal. Trump is normal. Trump. Is. Normal. Trump is the thing that normal is.

And that is precisely the problem.

It is not Donald Trumps abnormality that makes him truly heinous, it is his normality. It is his perpetuation of a status quo which is brutal, corrupt, and utterly fascistic. And which got there long before he did.

This is what your government is, America. This is what it is always been. If you do not like what you are seeing, do not just try to put a nicer mask on it so you can go back to sleep.

Change it. Change your normal. Create a new normal.

Donald Trump is everything the United States of America is. As one reader recently put it, " Donald Trump did not make things the way they are, he is the personification of the situation.

If the United States was a suit, then it was tailor made for Donald Trump."

Trump is normal. If you do not like your normal, America, then push for real change, not cosmetic change. It is not going to come from any president. It is going to have to come from you.

"This Ms Caitlin Johnstone article with its links are here:"

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