Sunday Thoughts July 07, 2024

Biden watch is in its second week. Maybe they should bring back the gag they used in the 1970’s during the Iran Hostage Crisis. “Biden Held Hostage: Day 13” and then have the usual chatterbots repeat the things they keep saying over and over about Biden’s problems. It is a good reminder of just how far down the toilet the media has gone. Fifty years ago, the television media would say bad things about a Democratic president who was a screw up.

Last week, Ross Douthat wrote a column in which he contemplated the reality of the modern president, which probably serves no real purpose to the functioning of the machine. He makes some obvious points but then quotes Curtis Yarvin and his brain then falls out of his head and the rest of his column devolves into nonsense. This is the risk of reading Yarvin. Your brain cells begin to die at an alarming rate, mostly as an act of suicide in order to avoid reading Yarvin.

The thing is the job of president has been ceremonial for a long time. Obviously, Biden is a vegetable and has been for most of his term. Under Trump, the system simply adapted to do what it wanted despite his efforts to do otherwise. Obama famously worked only a few hours a day. He never read his briefing books. His job was to perform the speaking role. Bush was a figurehead. Even Clinton complained about not having any real power.

The last president to hold real power and use it was probably Nixon, who was run out of town partially on the claim that he had too much power. This is when the managerial revolution entered into the consolidation phase as the separation between the regulatory state, the mass media and the economic elites collapsed with the managerial class taking control of the system. The size of the federal government exploded as a consequence.

My guess is what amounts to the executive committee running the White House is looking at polling and thinking that maybe it does not matter if the public knows Biden is brain dead. They can still do their usual magic with voting in key states and the party continues. The lesson they learned from January 6th is they can contain an insurrection if one occurs. The police state is probably better than they imagined, and the public is far more docile than they feared.

Topics

* No Joe Go

* Coping

* Project Bullshit (Link)

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