I’m not an American citizen so I get no say in the matter of who becomes the next American president, but if I did I’d either vote for one of the 1,214 independent candidates or I’d spoil my ballot paper. To put it simply a choice between Trump and Biden is like a choice between a shit sandwich with butter and a shit sandwich with mayonnaise, but whichever way you look at it, it’s still a shit sandwich. Both Trump and Biden are the establishment candidate, the main difference between them is that Trump is erratic and unpredictable (perhaps deliberately as a strategy or perhaps due to some form of mental illness – it’s often hard to tell) and Biden appears to be suffering from some sort of cognitive impairment, perhaps dementia or Alzheimer’s. Both answer to special interest groups and to big business, neither are interested in delivering any kind of substantial positive change to the lives of ordinary working people or to challenge the military industrial complex or to challenge the prison industrial complex.
Biden has been a member of the Senate for over 50 years and yet he is not running on his track record, the logical assumption is that his track record is poor, and it is. This is the man who helped craft the 1994 crime bill that has led to the mass incarceration of small-time drug offenders, young black men and has directly led to the USA having 25% of the planets prison population. Or perhaps go to YouTube and type “creepy Joe Biden”, watch for yourself and reach your own conclusions. Furthermore, he was vice president under Obama when more tonnage of ordnance was dropped every day for eight years than any other eight years in human history. The most prosperous country on the African continent, Libya, was bombed into the Stone Age under Obama’s watch, there is strong evidence that after the destruction of this country by American forces that open-air slave markets were operating in Libya selling black Africans as slaves. Under Obama’s watch the Yemen has been almost completely obliterated with more than a million people killed, if you don’t know anything about it don’t be surprised as the mainstream media has had an almost complete blackout on the subject.
Donald Trump’s record in politics is much shorter but is not much better. He has failed to put an end to America’s foreign interventionist wars as he promised to do and has been erratic, unpredictable and often incoherent. With Trump it is very difficult to know what is some kind of political tactic, decision-making on the fly or an attempt to keep allies and opponents alike guessing. Trump clearly displays many of the characteristics of a malignant narcissist and given the multiple accusations against him it would be fair to describe him as a suspected sex offender (legal disclaimer – I’m not saying that Trump is a sex offender because that could be interpreted as libel but given his own claims of being able to “grab women by the pussy” and allegations against him it’s a reasonable statement that this is suspected). He is also continuing America’s policy of persecuting whistle-blowers by pressuring the UK government into extraditing Julian Assange (Collateral Murder remains a damning indictment of the military-industrial complex and all politicians who are not actively opposing it are complicit in war crimes and should hang their heads in shame).
In the 2000 election when George W Bush beat Al Gore by a very small margin in the key state of Florida there were various liberals and centrists who accused the Green party candidate, Ralph Nader, of “costing the Democrats the election”. What they failed to appreciate is that both the election process was flawed and that Al Gore, in a move of rank cowardice, failed to challenge the result. Moreover, it is not the ‘right’ of the Democrat Party to be owed votes by anyone, rather it is responsibility of the Democrat party to win votes through delivering to ordinary people, something which it has consistently failed to do for a very long time. Other politically aware people continue to spew the nonsense that, “Biden is the lesser of two evils”, really? Is that the best that democracy can offer up? The lesser of two evils? Not only am I unconvinced that this is in fact true (VP during the Yemen’s and Libya’s destruction), but are you really going to endorse a system that sets the bar so low by voting for one of these clowns? If that is the best argument you can make and you are convinced of the need for change, then spoil your ballot or vote for one of the 1,214 independent candidates standing. Do not under any circumstances vote for “the lesser of two evils”? Or do you not understand that it is still evil and you only strengthen the existing pillars of the system?
