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Speaking in Europe on Saturday, Biden flew off the handle,
“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people’s love for liberty,” Biden said. “Brutality will never grind down their will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.It was like watching a machine spin faster and faster until it lost its bearing entirely. Needless to say, Biden's call for Putin to be deposed was walked backed furiously by the State Department.
"They will have a different future a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principles, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom of possibility. For God's sake this man cannot remain in power."
Why do American presidents jerk themselves up into such frenzies? .
Americans have tendency toward grandiloquent Manicheism, in which they cast everything into shadows of the lightest light and the darkest dark. There is no middle ground, which most people understand is the grey human condition.
But oh no! Every bump in the geo-political world, every disagreement invokes and involves the Host of Heaven against the Legions of Hell!
In swelling tones, the Flawless Obambi routinely inovked "that [shinning][seminal][epochal] document" signed over 200 years ago, here in America which proclaimed for all the world to hear, that all human beings were created free and equal and endowed [omit 'by their Creator'] with certain ianunalienababble rights, AMONG WHICH are ... etc. etc. etc." A hair more and it would have been the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
This was the same document that my English History book's chapter on the Loss of the American Colonies, called a "propagandist appeal" in whose "magical words" the colonists found stirring justification for their rebellion.
Well.... I suppose that if you are going to rebel you need to stir things up and I'm sure every nation has its Sacrosanct Mumbo Jumbo. But two hundred years after the event? Couldn't we let things settle down a little bit instead of whipping ourselves into a crusading frenzy at every juncture?
The Ukrainian Crisis involves a geo-political conflict, which, in my view, is largely of our own making but which in all events needs to be settle by cooler heads and not inflamed by overheated ones.
And yet one could see Biden working himself up as he leaped from "love of liberty" to "brutality" to "grinding down" to "the will to be free" to "hopelessness and darkness" to "hope and dignity" and "freedom ..." until at last, literally on the verge of tears he called for Putin's removal. The only thing surprising is that he did not say, "For God's sake, for the Lillies of the Field, for the little Cherbim on Earth as in Heaven, for All the Saints, for all ye who Labour for Righteousness's sake, I call upon the Host of Heaven, hear me out: This man cannot remain in power."
And, although he did not fly off that far, there can be no doubt that that was his frame of mind.
Bismarck must be gagging in his grave.
Geo-politics maybe fundamentally stupid and murderous but there is no need to make it worse by adding hysteria to the mix.
FDR's spontaneous remark, demanding Germany's unconditional surrender took everyone by surprise. But the rhetoric was so uncompromising they all jumped on board and ended up prolonging the war by cutting the German resistance off at the knees and removing the chance of a negotiated peace.
Now, it has to be said that Biden has done a decent job of containing the war-mongering hysterics in Congrease and the gaggle of neo cons that infests the nation's capital. So why did he then call for a outcome that all but ensured heightening and possibly enlarging the conflict?
It is, I think, because deep in their historically uniformed hearts, Americans truly believe their exceptionalist, light versus dark bullshit. I would only remind them that it is possible to adhere to moral principles and be humbly restrained at the same time.
