Do You Have A Letter For Me, Mr. Biden?
Two Scoops, Two Coups
At 12:46 PM Central Time, President Biden announced that he would not be seeking reelection in the 2024 Presidential Election. At first glance it seemed like a meme tweet in the midst of his “I’m Sick” and poor public appearances, and that mutual friends on Twitter had managed to pull the wool over the eyes of myself and friends. Much like Biden spokespeople and staffers, the announcement was very real and very much a surprise.
There had been grumblings and predictions by some that such an event would occur, even Elon Musk had gone out of his way to confirm that this was an “open secret” to many in the know. I was clearly not in the know, and was caught off guard by how sudden it was to drop a letter with no presidential seal and with a clearly xeroxed or copy-pasted image of his signature onto a letter he clearly didn’t write, onto a tweet he clearly post. Anyone remotely paying attention since the 2020 primaries knows that Biden has not fully been there mentally, and the conclusion to the greater public consensus generator has been that Biden has demonstrated since the debate that he is not the same man they elected in 2020, and he’s compromised state has led to what appears to be a sudden and organic ousting from the 2024 Democratic Ticket.
The question of “Who’s actually running the government?” is a perennial one in our Western societies, but outside of the mainstream conservative media circles and the online right, the question of who is actually running the government has been tossed aside as Monday rolls around for water cooler talk at the office. This isn’t even the first time the breakdown in appearances has happened with how the USG is managing itself both in terms of PR and actual governance. Just earlier this year Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was just missing from the public eye while the chain of command wasn’t sure what to actually do in his absence. The BBC reported the following just earlier this year back in February:
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has been pressed by lawmakers for not informing the White House of recent hospital stays, with one calling the failure an "embarrassment".
The Pentagon chief acknowledged there was "a breakdown in notifications" about his January hospital stay during a contentious Thursday hearing.
Mr. Austin, 70, has been undergoing prostate cancer treatment.
The Pentagon has found no "indication of ill intent" by Mr. Austin.
"I never told anyone not to inform the president, White House or anyone else about my hospitalization," Mr. Austin said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, the first chance lawmakers have had to question him since the incident came to light earlier this year.
No one believes Biden was running the country, nor did they at the beginning of “his” administration, in the same way one looks at the Military or US Intelligence Services and the gut understanding that these guys are goin to do their job hell or high water when it comes to “civilian leadership.” However going down that path when discussing things like “regime change” always gets uncomfortable real quick, and why writers like Yarvin and Deneen never talk about the military in their proposed bloodless revolutions save for in the abstract. That discussion will be shelved for a later date, right now we’re focusing on Biden’s departure.
There has not been public images or video of Joe Biden out and about in the last two days save for his campaigning in Nevada, a statement about testing positive for Covid and the curious “I’m Sick” tweet that has effectively kept him silent. The POTUS Twitter account has a tweet about inflation just a few hours before the statement from Joe Biden’s official twitter account. Even now the Wall Street Journal is having a hell of time a recounting just how bad things have been with Biden’s mental faculties since coming into the White House.
Boring details, I’m sure. There are others who have a better timeline and account of the facts than I do, but what’s important to consider is how fast it is to silence a leader in the digital age. Even prior to January 6, 2021, the Trump White House was effectively silenced on Twitter even as lawsuits, protests, and political maneuverings to stay in power were still ongoing.
One of the things that made 2015-2021 Trump so successful was his ability to bypass the press, the ultimate culture jammer and disintermediator by setting the agenda via Tweet rather than responding to the press defensively day in and day out. Trump’s ability to speak to the nation directly is a strong American tradition, even if half the country ignores his direct appeals and his voice and opted for what CNN had to say. In relation to our Constitutional Government, former lecturer and US President Woodrow Wilson had the following to say in his work in 1908:
And yet, because he [The President] has the ear of the whole nation and is undoubtedly its chosen spokesman and representative, the President may place the House at a great disadvantage if he choose to appeal to the nation. It is this that makes the great difference between the Speaker and the President, whose figures you might come to regard as very nearly equal if you looked no farther than Washington city itself. The Speaker of the House is not in the habit of appealing to the nation. He would feel himself ridiculous if he did. It would probably make an unpleasant impression were the executive officer of one of the houses of Congress, himself merely the representative of a single constituency, to turn to the nation by some open appeal of speech or argument to decide between him and the President. It is a point of good taste with him, as well as of good politics, to say little, say that little in enigmatic phrases, and confine himself to his proper role of management. But the President may turn to the country when he will, with whatever arguments, whatever disclosures of plan, whatever explanations he pleases. Everybody will read what he says, particularly if there be any smack of contest in the air, while few will read what is said in the House where no one speaks for the whole body or for the nation; and if the nation happens to agree with the President, if he can win it to his view, the leadership is his whether the houses relish it or not. They are at a disadvantage and will probably have to yield.
The true significance of the matter, for any student of government who wishes to understand the life rather than the mere theory of what he studies, is that the greatest power lies with that part of the government which is in most direct communication with the nation itself, — as one would naturally expect under any constitutional system. The light this evident fact throws upon the House of Representatives is this: that it has greatly weakened itself as an organ of public opinion by yielding to the need it has felt itself under to play the role of an independent part of the government. In its effort to make itself an instrument of business, to perform its function of legislation without assistance or suggestion, to formulate its own bills, digest its own measures, originate its own policies, it has in effect silenced itself.
The parts in bold are my emphasis.
Trump’s ability during the above mentioned times was that he could tell the media to go fuck themselves, or misspell coverage and give us “Covefe” that they spent a whole media cycle discussing in early weeks of his term. While Wilson’s comments are about the President’s relationship to the House of Representatives and making legislation, his centuries old comments about the President’s relationship to the people and public opinion still holds true today. For progressives, that means having the means and the media apparatus behind you at all times, with room for healthy debate on how to move things leftward (remember those Kink at Pride articles?)
This doesn’t necessarily mean that The President of the United States, especially one that is non compos mentis is going to have the ability to reach out. The press, the powerbrokers behind the scenes of bureaucrats, unelected officials and campaigners, can pull the knives on their beloved Caesar when the time deems it necessary. The plan to kneecap Joseph R. Biden has been a long time coming, and even if he had held on for dear life to stay in the race. The ability to effectively silence him and his team had led to a simple screenshot of a letter to be dropped and summarily removing his faction from the race and the ballot was quick and complete with millions now raised for Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic Nominee in November.
While there is not a shot-for-shot comparison between the two, you can see the same thing with Trump after the 2020 election. Once Trump was banned from Twitter, it was over. The man who had the appeal and the command of his people was gone, and his voice had disappeared. His campaign this time around has somewhat benefitted from this, the only thing he’s Tweeted out since his account was reinstated on Twitter was a photo of his mugshot along with a link to his campaign website. The effective silencing of Biden means that a Tweet like this is met with people calling for proof of life.
