Though old and semi-demented, Biden continues to play a treacherous role in US politics. A sworn (but underhanded) enemy of social security and Medicare, two programs the ruling class has been trying to defund and destroy for generations, Biden is now happily putting the fox in the chicken coop. It’s what Democrats do. (Repugs are no different, of course, but worse at pretending.)
A wide-ranging discussion of the political situation in the US, the deepening crisis and corruption, outrageous inequality, alarming paralysis and ineptitude, the options for true challengers to the status quo, and the efforts of the establishment to put out the fires by all the usual methods, from censorship and disinformation to outright repression.
Joe Biden recently appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel late night show for an interview that lasted nearly 20 minutes but must have seemed like twice that to anyone watching and waiting for the President to express himself clearly and succinctly without fits and starts or rambling incoherently. At one point Kimmel even felt compelled to interrupt the President and throw to commercial just to put a temporary stop to the cringe. Jimmy and his panel of The Dive’s Jackson Hinkle and American Comedian Kurt Metzger review Biden’s performance and how well Kimmel was able to cover for the increasingly doddering President.
PATRICE GREANVILLE—For all his anti-imperialist rhetoric, Chomsky remains a controversial and deeply contradictory individual. Defining himself often as an anarchist—a form of adventuristic ultra-leftism—he is prone to criticise in harsh terms Lenin and Stalinism, that is any truly existing socialist government, be it China, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Venezuela, or the Soviet Union. In that way he ends up denouncing imperialism but canceling the denunciation by also attacking socialist nations under Imperialist attack. This is the “plague on both your houses” approach that is typical of many so-called “liberal progressives”. Chomsky also has a terribly naive conception of how the working class can attain power. In his book Turning the Tide, he argues that socialism can be secured in the US via the ballot box.
The January 6th hearings are underway and, according to the New York Times, Democrats are hoping that the public demonstration of just how loathsome the Republicans who supported the “insurrection” are will turn the tide of public opinion in their favor. Without a strong economy or any tangible legislative gains to point to, it may be their only hope. But will it work? Jimmy and The Dive’s Jackson Hinkle discuss whether average Americans will take much interest in the hearings and the electoral bloodbath shaping up for Democrats come November.