Monday, July 8: "The Goodest Job"
Counting down the days to a president's inevitable and deserved demise
Last week, in a rare moment of accidental honesty, Joseph Robinette Biden gave an interview where he summed up his feelings about running against Donald Trump. When asked how he would feel in January if he lost the election, Biden replied with, “as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job I can do, that’s what this is all about.” Strange, I’ve been told repeatedly that this election is all about saving democracy and the future of American hegemony or whatever.
When the interviewer asked whether Biden would drop out if fellow democrats in congress said he was hurting their re-election chances in November, the genocidal artifact followed up by saying, "If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that I might do that." Generally speaking, it's neither good nor normal when the leader of a country says that only God could convince him to step aside. In the past there were certain words used to describe these kinds of leaders, but I digress.
Asking this octogenarian geriatric windbag to politely step aside from the presidency is becoming eerily similar to asking your grandma to give up her driver's license. It might be tense and uncomfortable, but everyone knows it’s for the best and could legitimately save some lives. The useless dinosaur should be spending his time in a nursing home, or (if there was any justice in this country) a padded cell. Instead he’s conducting interviews trying desperately to convince voters that the emperor is fully and resplendently clothed. Unfortunately for him and his supporters, many of these voters have functioning eyes and can easily see that his naked and shriveled shell is rapidly deteriorating.
While many Americans are focused on whether or not Biden will keel over before the election in November, has anyone else noticed that the apartheid state’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the brutal repression in the West Bank are no longer major news stories? The mass murder, famine, and suffering of over a million displaced Gazans hasn’t ended. Nor have the land seizures, deadly raids, and thousands of Palestinians detained without charges in the West Bank. But somehow much of the western media has allowed it to fall out of the news cycle entirely.
In the meantime, the apartheid state of Israel recently approved the largest seizure of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in over 30 years. This land theft is obviously a critical component of the colonial genocide that’s been taking place for 75+ years. “By declaring them state lands, the Israeli government has opened them up to being leased to Israelis and prohibited private Palestinian ownership.” This land grab would’ve been worthy of a few headlines in the past, but in the context of the greater genocide unfolding, it’s simultaneously acknowledged and overlooked.
There are now multiple reports confirming that Israeli forces are systematically using rape as a method of torture against detained Palestinians, but unsurprisingly there’s zero outrage or even coverage from Western media. The reports from Israeli detention facilities describe violence that matches and even exceeds the brutality of the crimes committed by the US in Abu Ghraib, but it’s crickets from major media outlets.
An article from an Israeli publication indicates that the Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of deadly force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas on October 7. While this revelation was apparent to anyone paying attention to the footage of bombed vehicles and houses in Israeli settlements, it’s somehow widely ignored by western media.
Finally, The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, provided a conservative estimate that the direct and indirect death toll of the genocide in Gaza could be as high as 186,000 people, which would amount to ~8% of the entire population. This devastating figure obviously exceeds the ~38,000 estimate that’s been quoted by US officials for months, a figure that American politicians recently decided shouldn’t be trusted. The house of representatives passed an amendment weeks ago barring the state department from using the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll statistics for the genocide.
Just imagine this political body making the same decision during World War II, convincing themselves that surely the number of Jews estimated to have been exterminated by Hitler and his Nazi pals can’t actually be trusted. This would of course qualify as Holocaust denial, an unthinkable taboo and even a crime in some countries. Yet when the dead bodies are Palestinian, the willingness to look elsewhere or doubt the validity of a death toll is not just permissible, but codified as law. Pathetic.
Side Items
Presidential Immunity: The supreme court expanded their devious corruption by recently ruling that American presidents are generally immune from prosecution for any official actions they take while in office. This practically guarantees that Donny Trump is unlikely to face any consequences for his numerous crimes performed while serving as head of state. Of course if you stop and think about it for more than two seconds you’ll remember that George W Bush stole an election before it was common, invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan without cause, enthusiastically defended torture, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people...and somehow he's innocently finger painting down in Texas. This supreme court ruling does nothing but remove the mask, but in reality presidential immunity has been here for awhile folks
French Election: A coalition of leftist French parties united to win the most parliamentary seats and prevent the far-right party of moronic zionist Marine Le Pen from winning control of the wine and cheese-lovers. The French left did so surprisingly well this weekend that out of respect and in solidarity, I will pause on making ‘jokes’ about hating the French for the time being
Hillbilly Formula 1: For the second year in a row, NASCAR held a race in downtown Chicago, and for the second year in a row, the weekend featured heavy rains and canceled events. I’m no racing enthusiast (unless we’re counting The Fast and The Furious), but perhaps the city’s decision-makers should take these repeated failures as a hint and leave NASCAR to our redneck brethren down South