OCCUPY BIDEN, AGAIN

FOSSIL FUEL FREE IS THE WAY TO BE

The Occupy Biden folks were on the march again to the president’s Wilmington, Delaware home on Barley Mill Road to make the same points they made at the first Occupy event in December, 2021. It appears to be a quixotic quest. As I pointed out in a previous post, Joe Biden has the power by virtue of his Executive Orders as President of The United States to unilaterally declare a climate emergency and put a stop to all new fossil fuel projects, but the man Matt Taibbi recently characterized as a “bumbling ball scratcher” apparently isn’t up to the task. It would take wisdom, compassion, a Herculean dedication to the common good, and above all the courage to defy the will of the corporate oligarchs running the country to place the health of the planet and the survival of all of its species above the corporate bottom line. As I wrote in a recent email to Mr. Fish, the great cartoonist/journalist who illustrates my rants, during his long career as a deal maker in the Swamp, Biden drank too deeply from the tainted waters of neoliberalism to assume the role of eco-visionary in humanity’s dire moment and do the right thing.

Emily Atkin, who writes the fantastic Substack blog Heated, interviewed activist Joye Braun back on October 5, 2022 about our corporate president after he revoked the Keystone Xl pipeline’s permit and then abruptly turned around and allowed the Line 3 to become operational. “Biden right now is following in the footsteps of many other presidents before him,” said Braun, “in that he has grown a forked tongue. He says one thing, but does the complete opposite in order to appease corporate interests that are hurting the planet and the waters, and violating human rights.”

Biden and the Democrats have demonstrated time and time again that they aren’t interested in addressing the climate crisis or much of anything else on behalf of the American people for that matter, including the impending economic debacle at the root of it all. Like the Republicans, the Democrats, the other “rightwing” party of “puppets for the the ruling oligarchs,"as Chris Hedges describes them, are more interested in beating the drums of war. They “refuse to curb the rapacious appetites of the war industry and the rich, accelerating the crisis,” says Hedges, writing in his regular Scheerpost column. “That the rage of the dispossessed is legitimate, even if it is expressed in inappropriate ways, is never acknowledged by the Democrats, who were instrumental in pushing through the trade deals, deindustrialization, tax loopholes for the rich, deficit spending, endless wars and austerity programs that have created the crisis.” ¹

Under such circumstances, why would anyone think beseeching Joe Biden to stand up for Democracy and execute an executive order on behalf of the American people is a good idea? As Mr. Fish eloquently posed the question in his February 12, 2022 Scheerpost article Demokracy and the Whole Point of Political Cartooning and Satire, “How can American democracy thrive when it is subsidized by unaccountable private tyrannies operated by profoundly undemocratic multinational corporations that exist as part of a coordinated effort to replace a population’s natural instincts for creative and dynamic self-determination with a highly curated and pacifying consumerism?”

Mr. Fish also raised a point that makes mobilizing actual public demonstrations such as Occupy Biden, absolutely crucial. “The internet has neutered political protest and dissent by isolating and individualizing the experience of ‘revolution’ and making the likeminded community of fist-raising comrades virtual and not publicly demonstrated. The same is true for television: there are likely more well-informed critics of the federal government nowadays than there were 20 years ago, given the work of Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, yet the likelihood of genuine political revolt or organized protest is no greater than it ever was because the experience of outrage aimed at buffoonish and corrupt leaders is isolated and practiced in private as mere entertainment consumption.” ²

The various Occupy Biden coalitions continued to resist that trend with another example of genuine organized protest right in Biden’s backyard on Presidents’ Day, February 21, 2022. For a gallery of pictures documenting the event go to shootingatrandom.com and select CLIMATE ACTION NOW in the menu bar.

1. Dwayne Booth, Mr. Fish: Demokracy and the Whole Point of Political Carooning and Satire, Scheerpost.com. February 12, 2022.

2. Chris Hedges, Hedges: Democrats, the More Effective Evil, Scheerpost.com. February 14, 2022.