Wednesday open thread: It's going to be hard
Good morning, my friends.
Today is going to be a hard day. President Joe Biden will address the nation at 8 pm EDT, explaining his decision to withdraw from the race. I'm sure millions of Americans, and millions around the world, will have a lump in their throats as he speaks.
Joe Biden is, simply, a good, decent, and honorable man. He is the antithesis of so many who are in politics. He is certainly the polar opposite of his one-time opponent. A tweet I saw yesterday stated: "Joe Biden ended his candidacy to save America. Donald Trump will end America to save his candidacy." Succinct. And accurate.
Just as many of us will die angry at those who torpedoed Hillary Clinton in 2016, many of us will die angry at the vitriol visited upon Pres. Biden for this past month. It was unwarranted. It was uncalled for. It was scurrilous and dishonorable.
As we've written before, one can trace Pres. Biden's decline in polling to his most courageous act before he quit the race: His decision, almost unheard of in American politics, to end a war which promised to go on forever. He removed the media's shiny toy. The hysteria which subsumed the likes of Richard Engel was out of all proportion to the attention—or inattention, rather—which the media had devoted to Afghanistan, our longest war. After that, the knives came out, and were never again sheathed.
Pres. Biden was pilloried for not being entertaining enough. For not having staff which would leak tidbits to the political press. For being old and "out of it". At some point, we have to mature as a democracy and realize that good governance is by its nature boring. It's making sure the lights are on. It's making sure people have a decent standard of living. It's not sending out mean tweets and driving the 24/7 news cycle. We have the technology to instantly know what is happening all around the world. But we do not have the wisdom to block out the noise, to separate the wheat from the chaff. We are on a never-ending rollercoaster, and are being sickened by it.
Wrenching the world away from its addiction to constant stimulation is going to be the great civilizational struggle. We cannot address any of the other problems we face—from climate change to war to poverty—if we are inundated with "news" which titillates but doesn't inform. Which grabs our attention, but doesn't allow us to think. Joe Biden fell victim to this new mania.
I see the anger on this site. And I'm going to say this: I won't harangue or chastise. I won't urge you to get on the Kamala Harris train. I know you will vote the right way, and that's all any of us can ask. There are more than enough people doing the work and donating; voting is the most important act. I simply hope that the space we've all created here will allow you to heal. The bar is always open.