A slice of president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that calls for closer analysis:
Putin’s invasion has been a test for the ages. A test for America. A test for the world.
Would we stand for the most basic of principles?
Would we stand for sovereignty?
Would we stand for the right of people to live free from tyranny?
Would we stand for the defense of democracy?
“Would we stand for the most basic of principles?”
It is important to parse what Biden said. Notice how this is spoken as a series of questions. Biden is not saying that the US stands for the most basic of principles. Neither is he saying that the US (“we”) stands for all principles. He speaks to just the most basic principles. What are those “most basic of principles”?
Is sabotage not a violation of a most basic principle? Veteran journalist Seymour Hersch investigated the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and the evidence shows that the US did it.
How about America’s much ballyhooed fidelity to so-called free trade? Take the case of China in which the US has recently begun seizing aluminum products imported from China, accusing China of using forced labor in Xinjiang for these products. The US, under Donald Trump’s tenure, had Canada arrest Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver International Airport and place her under house arrest for three years. (What is it they say about justice delayed? Meng was released with all charges against her dismissed by the judge.) The US has applied strong-arm tactics worldwide to have countries reject purchase of Huawei’s 5G network. It tried to force China to give America the social media sensation Tik Tok. It is coercing countries to prevent China from buying chip technology. Is this principled economic competition?
Adhering to signed treaties would seem to qualify as a most basic principle? Yet the string of broken treaties that the US had entered into with Indigenous nations speaks not to standing for principle.
Certainly not committing or partaking in genocide should be at, or very near, the top of a most basic principle list. But the US is founded through genocide and dispossession.
“Would we stand for sovereignty?”
This question is better posed as “Have we stood for sovereignty?”
Does the US respect the sovereignty of Venezuela in trying to impose an unelected Juan Guaido as the Venezuelan president or by abducting Venezuelan diplomats? Does the US respect the sovereignty of Syria by invading the country, stealing the oil and wheat, and attempting regime change? Has the US ever respected the sovereignty of Haiti where it has overthrown elected leaders and occupied the country, exploiting it as a low-wage workforce? In recent times, there is much speculation of an imminent invasion of Haiti by the US. There is also the US’s absence of respect for sovereignty in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Honduras, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Chagos archipelago, Cuba, etc.
And most egregiously, the US has destroyed the sovereignty of the Indigenous nations on Turtle Island.
“Would we stand for the right of people to live free from tyranny?”
How about Palestinians who suffer under Jewish Israeli tyranny? When has Biden stood for Palestinians to live free from tyranny? In fact, Biden proudly claims to be a Zionist.
What is the US but a tyranny of the 1%-ers over the masses? Universal health care, a most basic principle in many countries, is thwarted at each foray by the 1%-ers against the will of the majority of Americans. The US is a country with over half-a-million people enduring the indignity of homelessness. Isn’t that a basic principle? The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25:1) says it is. And the US is a signatory. No matter. It is a non-binding declaration and not a treaty. But then treaties don’t seem to matter either to the US.
Emphatically, the Indigenous people in the undeniably stolen landmass called the US live under tyranny.
“Would we stand for the defense of democracy?”
Is democracy what the US stands for in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, etc?
What is democratic about mandating experimental so-called vaccines on the population? Writer Ben Bartee considers this to reveal an anarcho-tyranny. As time passes, the establishment’s fraudulent COVID-19 narrative crumbles more and more.
In the case of the US, there are two business parties that control what is fallaciously called democracy. However, if the people would choose social democracy and the pliable Bernie Sanders is their candidate of choice, then the big-money wheels will step in to undo any democratic expression that they consider unacceptable. Thus, the US winds up with a worn-out, intellectually diminishing Biden and his reviled vice president Kamala Harris — a woman whose integrity was destroyed in the presidential debates by Tulsi Gabbard.
The US can claim to stand for democracy when its claim to be such is a sham because the media is part of the controlling apparatus. As Michael Parenti explains in his book Democracy for the Few, democracy in the US is controlled by the moneyed class.
So what the hell was Biden going on about in the speech? And why were all these politicians clapping?
And how does America fare on Biden’s test?
Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com.
