It was a choreographed scene featuring the U.S. President and First Lady, intended to convey the restorative spirit of the holiday season.
Last week, Joe and Jill Biden emerged from behind a black curtain like giddy celebrities and took their red seats in front of a large Christmas tree filled with decorations and gifts at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC.
Their enthusiastic audience included a group of young patients and their parents eager to see the Commander-in-Chief and his wife reading aloud the popular poem The Night Before Christmas.
“Thank you for allowing us to come see you,” President Biden said.
Indeed, every First Lady, starting with Bess Truman – 75 years ago – has made the annual pilgrimage to the children’s hospital “to spread holiday cheer.” In 2022, Biden became the first sitting president to follow suit.
A frail-looking but animated Biden winked, waved and smiled as the First Lady read from the picture book, holding it aloft.
When the First Lady finished, Biden thanked the hospital staff. “It’s special, special what you do.”
He had this parting advice: “Where there is life, there is hope.” »
With that, Biden urged children to return after recovery to offer support to other children who are spending the holidays in the hospital rather than at home.
A hospital official praised the Bidens for “continuing this annual tradition…(which) brings so much joy to all the children, families and our staff.”
“God bless you all,” Biden said.
Their performance lasted less than 10 minutes.
Brief as it was, it was designed in part, I suspect, to burnish “Uncle Joe’s” credentials as a caring president who is all too familiar with worry, heartbreak and searing pain caring for sick children or losing them to a sudden and violent act. with terrible consequences.
But watching the Bidens enact this perfunctory ritual — with TV cameras in tow of course — only deepened my contempt for a decrepit president who considers the well-being and lives of some children more precious than others.
Instead of using his powers and influence to try to stop the mutilation and murder of thousands of Palestinian children, Biden has heinously encouraged the mutilation and murder of thousands of Palestinian children.
In occupied Palestine, Biden is not a harbinger of “joy,” but the co-architect of the dystopian carnage that engulfs a broken people and their broken land.
This complicit president, who is fully committed to a systematic campaign to snuff out life and hope in Gaza and the West Bank, had the almost sickening audacity to share what amounts to a cheap greeting card philosophy according to which “where there is life, there is hope”.
Amazing.
Biden compounded this obscenity by visiting a hospital to congratulate the doctors and nurses caring for the sick, while US proxy Israel mercilessly occupied, ransacked and destroyed hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip and obliterated and forcibly killed Palestinian doctors and nurses.
What they did and how they did it – to borrow a phrase – was also special.
That Biden and his handlers were blind to this blatant and ugly juxtaposition shows how the promising lives and horrific deaths of the Palestinians are disposable and forgettable in their misanthropic geopolitical calculus.
The litany of halting images of the grimy faces of Palestinian children crying out for their lost moms and babas or their limp little bodies wrapped in white shrouds apparently did not deter Biden from playing his part in a pleasant photo op that, given the deadly nature of the times and a dark context, stings of indecency.
The symbolic appearance of the Bidens and all that it revealed about the president’s signature served as an exclamation point to an awareness that, like a hurricane, has gathered strength and momentum within me since the beginning of October.
I was such an idiot.
I wrote articles – which I wish I could delete – praising Biden as an educated, if not honorable, alternative to the chaos and madness embodied by an illiterate and dishonorable charlatan named Donald Trump.
I wrote other articles – which I also wish I could delete – extolling the wisdom of enlightened Americans who, I was convinced, would choose Biden over Trump again next November and spare a worrying world four more years of Trumpian madness and chaos.
Enlightened Americans exist. There just aren’t enough of them.
I have chastised other, much wiser columnists who have written that beyond rhetorical limitations, both Biden and Trump were elected to protect the interests – at home and abroad – of the oligarchs they they serve under the ridiculous guise of a phantom “democracy” addicted to war. and plunder for profit.
On this decisive point, Biden has proven to be just as useful and reliable a puppet as his predecessor. Trump’s crude manners and profanities offend the delicate sensibilities of liberal and progressive cognoscenti, not his loyalty to the disfiguring status quo.
I don’t care who wins the next presidential campaign. I will not worry at all about the “future” of America, because even if the recent past is decisive, the most efficient killing machine in history is destined to cause even more death, more pain and suffering across the world – regardless of who is president.
Next year I will enjoy the entertaining spectacle of a country descending further into bigotry and dissonance while much of it, predictably, turns to puppets with megaphones , like Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, to get out of (or into) the imminence. abyss.
Speaking of muppets, a note to the swarm of assholes who will no doubt warn me to be “careful what I wish for.”
How much worse can it be? A genocide is being carried out against millions of innocent Palestinians while dear old Uncle Joe twiddles his gnarled thumbs. Rather than being furious about this, you will be upset with me for writing this “scandalous” column.
Priorities.
Finally, I think it would be appropriate for Trump to return to the White House.
Then all the stupid jokes about America being a nation founded on a sacrosanct constitution, the rule of law, and a shining city on a hill that the rest of us should emulate will be emphatically extinguished.
What a moment it will be when Americans – well, 66% of eligible voters – make November 5, 2024 official: the election of a career criminal to lead a criminal regime.
So, Happy New Year to everyone!
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.