WATCHING THE NEXT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION UNFOLD THROUGH PALESTINIAN AND HAITIAN EYES

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2024

Little Rock, Arkansas

 

We can go online and read the Project 2025 report published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation to learn what to expect if Donald Trump becomes the next President of the United States after the 2024 general election. It is beyond disquieting. It is horrible to expect an executive branch run by demagogues determined to gut federal agencies responsible for health, human services, education, environmental protection, and respect for federal lands. If elected in 2024, Donald Trump will usher in an era of fascism unlike anything imagined in U.S. history.

But we need look no further than Palestine and Haiti to know what to expect if Joe Biden is re-elected.

Joe Biden has been counseling, cheering, financing, and outfitting the Israeli apartheid regime. That regime has used U.S. funding to terrorize Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel has used U.S. weapons, munitions, and diplomatic cover to commit what the International Court of Justice calls a “plausible” case of genocide in Gaza.

Biden signed legislation that cut humanitarian relief to Gaza and the West Bank and defunded UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for doing humanitarian work in those areas.

Biden bypassed Congress to send military equipment (bombs, bullets, and other tools of war) for Israel to use against defenseless men, women, and children in Gaza.

Biden’s administration blocked passage of resolutions in the UN Security Council that called for ceasefire in Gaza. After his UN Ambassador abstained to allow passage of a resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Biden cut off the humanitarian aid funding for urgently needed food, medical supplies and equipment, and shelter for Palestinians in Gaza.

And on April 18, Biden’s UN Ambassador vetoed the admission of Palestine to the United Nations. Thanks to the Biden administration, Israel, a nation that has committed apartheid since its inception in 1948 and is now committing genocide, can do so with impunity and say that it has no Palestinian state with which to negotiate for a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And on the same day (April 18), Biden’s administration deported Haitian refugees back to Haiti. The deported people fled Haiti and came to the United States to escape poverty, disease, violence, and governmental turmoil. The United States has worked to undermine Haitian sovereignty and self-determination for centuries. Biden has supported that effort across his political career.

Palestinians and Haitians are glaring proof of Biden’s cultural incompetence, feckless Zionism, and self-serving approach to geopolitics.

I do not make these observations to promote Donald Trump, a  sociopathic idiot and narcissistic maniac whose approach to domestic and global policy is sickening. I merely mention Biden’s conduct towards Palestinians and Haitians to remind readers that his past and present actions are despicable and responsible for Palestinian and Haitian suffering.

The world is watching Trump’s trial as a criminal defendant who has already been civilly adjudicated guilty of commercial fraud and sexual assault, and is criminally charged with stealing classified documents in Florida, supporting an insurrection in Washington, D.C., and election interference in Georgia. The world doesn’t need another crooked politician. We already have far too many of them.

At the same time, the world is watching Biden’s trial as a global leader who supports an apartheid regime in Israel that is committing genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing and state-sanctioned settler colonialism in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and continuing the centuries long interference with Haitian independence, sovereignty, self-determination, and economic and social security. The world doesn’t need another four years of Biden’s feckless support for Israeli apartheid and genocide, militarism, and idolatry of Zionist settler colonialism, and capitalist imperialism. We have already witnessed far too much of that.

The next Biden administration, like the next Trump administration, will produce more harms that the world doesn’t need. Fools, idiots, and lunatics wittingly invite more of what is plainly harmful to themselves. The world is watching to see whether U.S. voters fit into those categories, either because they re-elect Biden because they are scared of Trump’s vicious idiocy and his fascist supporters or crave the fascism that will ensue from returning him to power.

This is messed up.