someone suggested I diary about this essay by the brilliant Umair Haque, a British economist I have been reading for a while. What he writes, and the way he explains the nightmare mess we are in as species, often scares the crap out of me.
But after President Joe’s inspired speech, desperately needed speech, Haque offered something I did not expect from him—HOPE.
Last night, Joe Biden gave a speech that’s going to change America — and the world. Yes, really. You’re used to hearing me full of doom and gloom — but that’s not for effect. I call it like it is. And this speech? It was a pivotal moment in the history of the 21st century. History will remember it in a certain way: as a turning point, that altered the grim political trajectory the world was — until this moment — helplessly on.
Yes, it’s that big. Doubt me? Good. Let me make my case, beginning with the Big Picture, the world, and then we’ll come back to America.
he goes on to catalogue what has been happening worldwide—in Britain with Brexit, in Italy with the rise of fascists in Italy and France, and Germany.
It wasn’t until the next day, since the networks REFUSED to cover it, that the big reactions exploded. I guess summer reruns would get more eyes. So yeah, they’re complicit as we always knew. Haque compares this to Gorbachev’s speech on the end of the Wall and how this speech too will change history.
The American Establishment is deeply uncomfortable with what Biden’s doing. They are trying to stop him. The networks didn’t fail to cover his speech and the Times and Post barely mention it and CNN disgracefully attacks its backdrop, as if that was the thing which really mattered — in some kind of coincidence. It’s how power works. Some of it’s explicit — like CNN reporters obviously being instructed by their new libertarian boss to attack the President. Some of it’s implicit, like networks all deciding, hey, a President warning your democracy’s under existential threat isn’t worth you hearing about, all you need is more more dumb Superhero TV Shows. There are many ways to stop a political movement, after all. Acts of commission — CNN style, or acts of omission, New York Times and Washington Post and networks style.
In that sense, Biden is a Gorbachev-like figure right now: lonely, brave, determined. To change a politics. To renew the causes of freedom and democracy. To fundamentally alter the way things have been done for too long, to shake and rattle broken, dead, systems out of their paralysis. He will go down in history.
Because, you see, the world isn’t so simple anymore. You can’t really just stop a movement anymore using power the old ways — not covering a speech, having sycophantic reporters and pundits attack it’s style, not its substance, barely bothering to write a headline about it. Why not?
Well, just take a look at…the internet. It was electrified...
there is so much more to the essay. I hope you will read it.
And more than anything, I hope he is right.