Democracy, for Thomas Friedman, countless others, isn’t about Democracy at all, it’s all about the optics.
There’s always that moment in the movies when we’re in the bottom of the ninth; when the chicken’s burnt; when the calculations don’t compute, or when the President’s been incapacitated.
That’s when the White boss calls on the Black player/maid/math whiz/vice-president because, you see, that’s how we do things in America, let the chips fall as they may. In the end the chicken’s great; John Glenn comes down safely; the Republic’s saved; the Red Sox lose.
If—and I said if—the President’s not competent there’s a solution. The President steps down. Vice-President steps in. Orderly transition. EOM.
I must have read or listened to every liberal pundit I can stomach, and quite a few I can’t. All loudly calling for Biden not to run for re-election, not a single one calling for him to step down, as if the President were too incapacited to win but not too incapacitated to rule; like the White guy in the movie who doesn’t really care how the chicken tastes, or whether John Glenn comes down in pieces, because Bl*ck W*m*n! And how will that look!
On the last day of the Weimar Republic, March 23, 1933, Otto Wels, the Chairman of the Social Democratic Party and leader of the Socialists in the Reichstag, gave a passionate speech:
“We stand by the founding principles of a state based on the rule of law, of equal rights, of social justice that are established in it.”1
Meaning : since the Democratic Socialists adhered to the Weimar Constitution they were powerless against Hitler’s perfectly legal decision to dissolve the Weimar Republic. But in practice the Democratic Socialists, like the bad White guys in the movie, had not been powerless at all, they had colluded all along by their passivity, in Weimar against the Communists, in America against the Leftists and Blacks and Browns. Democracy for Wels (or Thomas Friedman, countless others), isn’t about Democracy, it’s all about the optics. It’s not about respecting the rights of all, whether students or Palestinians or women; it’s about pretending you respect.
This is America, Bro’. It’s the bottom of the ninth and the chicken’s in the fryer. Respect.
WOID XXIV-09
June 28, 2023
Käthe Leichter The Best Defense „Die beste Abwehr“ [1933]. Translated from the German with Notes and Commentary by Paul Werner. (2020), p. 25; https://www.academia.edu/44412249/K%C3%A4the_Leichter_The_Best_Defense_Die_beste_Abwehr_Der_Kampf_1933_Translated_from_the_German_with_notes_and_commentary