The Voices in My Head — Part 2
I still have trouble wrapping my mind around what you’re saying about Joe Biden’s real motivation.
If what happened hadn’t happened, I would not have believed it. But, it happened. (Three months ago I wrote “Good Cop/ Bad Cop — Sometimes You Have to Choose). With hindsight, in my humble opinion; the article was somewhat prescient. For the first time in his 50 year political career, Joe Biden found himself in a box that he could not manipulate, nor shmooze himself out of. For decades, he counted on his proven ability to reach across the aisle and forge for relationships, howsoever tenuous, that others deemed impossible, or simply not worth the trouble.
This was different. The stakes were far greater. He was not Senator Biden from Delaware. He was President Biden. He was not reaching across the aisle — he was reaching across the border. He was not being asked to moderate an in-house spat. He was attempting to do something that no one had been able to do — since Neville Chamberlain, in 1939, proclaimed that he had achieved nothing less than “peace in our time” (just before World War 2 broke out, eventually claiming an estimated 50 million lives worldwide.)
It is an open secret that the person who was asking Biden to do this was Biden himself. He had been doing an outstanding job standing behind Ukraine and delivering the necessary weapons for defence, financial and medical supplies as needed to fight off the shocking, unprovoked Russian invasion. This was perhaps Ukraine at its best, and our NATO allies at their best.
For that alone, not to speak of the fact, that he and he alone was able to stand up to Darth Vader (in the November 2020 election and defeat him — easily, in my view — he deserves a place in the American Canon of significant Presidents.)
Then came October the 7th, and (again, in my view) Joe Biden (who by now was drinking the Kool-Aid regularly) began to implode.
* He had run on the promise that (as already the oldest man to be elected President, he recognized that, at best, he was “a transitional figure.”)
It seemed a clear admission, it was not in America’s best interest to run (and very possibly win).
Then, suddenly, early in 2021, he announced that he had no intention of stepping aside and releasing his pledged delegates. Biden would not listen to a single word on that subject. It was taboo. It had taken Biden 50 years to get here, he was doing a hell of a job; along the way he had lost his first wife, his infant daughter (and later his beloved Beau.) And now, he had to endure the ongoing alcoholism and crack-cocaine addiction of his son, Hunter. He did not say it, but it was almost as though he felt God owed it to him.
* I won’t revisit the Israeli-Hamas War, but against just about everyone’s wishes — on single-handedly, persistently micro-managing. He would show them, not only would he rise to the challenge — he would succeed in achieving what no one else could accomplish! He would work tirelessly to achieve an immediate cease-fire.
And, this is the point where it all went wrong for Joe Biden. He had to know, after decades of working intensively with foreign dictators and demagogues of every stripe; that Netanyahu was treacherous, rotten, and dangerous to the core.
For a deeper look into the underlying causes, see next week An American Tragedy
- Gerald Alper is the author of Portrait of Artist as a Young Patient (Psychodynamic Studies of the Creative Personality), and his latest book: God and Therapy (What We Believe When No One is Watching).
