When you make a deal with The Blob, you sign in blood
Once you join The Blob, don’t think you can just keep on making your own decisions.
Haven’t you ever wondered why each successive presidency follows the same path? Why, when we get a change of presidents and parties, do the great majority of harmful policies continue unabated? You would think that with each new presidency you would get new ideas, new priorities and new policies. But in my lifetime, that has never happened, and I voted for Jimmy Carter.
It is often assumed that US presidents have no real power, but that isn’t completely true. They do have extraordinary power, but they don’t wield it based on their own initiative. They serve at the pleasure of The Blob, and it has always been that way. They do whatever The Blob whispers in their ears. Well, there is probably a lot of shouting involved sometimes, but you get my point. Once you join The Blob, especially as its top spokesperson, you can’t just keep making your own decisions.
Examples range from the extreme difficulty of ending the horrendous war in Afghanistan to the seeming impossibility of getting any President to agree with the majority of the US population on enacting Medicare for All. It is clear who the President’s masters are. Joe Biden is a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America, and every other powerful nook and cranny of The Blob.
This brings me to why Democrats like Joe Biden or Republicans like Donald Trump act the way they do. Why are they so beholden to The Blob? The love of money is the root of all evil, and it is also just so happens to be the driving force behind all of The Blob’s actions. If you try to do something that heavy capital doesn’t like, you are in for a world of hurt.
You may have noticed that Joe Biden has reversed only a small fraction of the executive orders and policies of the Trump administration. If you were listening to Mr. Biden during the campaign (before he had the votes) you would think he would have jumped right in and changed almost everything. For one, he would have immediately dropped all charges against Julian Assange, right? He would have immediately restarted diplomatic talks with Iran and reentered the nuclear agreement, right? He would have ended sanctions against countries like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, right? No, he did none of those things, and they aren’t even on the agenda. The list of things he isn’t doing, that he should be doing, is enormous. But Joe isn’t really in charge. Even if he came up with some good idea (humor me here), it would be beaten into a pulp by staffers and advisers before he even finished uttering the sentence. Joe has to listen to the people around him, and if he is lucky, he gets to choose option A over option B.
Donald Trump was a bit different. He would often poke The Blob, and say something publically that seemed to threaten it. But that was just his Art-of-the-Deal way of unnerving The Blob right before he not only did its bidding, but exceeded all its expectations. Donald Trump was the best thing that ever happened to The Blob since Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush the Younger and Obama. Actually, it’s all kind of a blur, isn’t it?
By the way, you don’t really think that Joe Biden or Donald Trump write executive orders, right? Because they don’t, they sign them. That isn’t leading, that is rubber stamping The Blob’s business proposals. I don’t know why they bother with all those pens, they just need a big Presidential-stampy thing.
So don’t ponder why things either stay the same, or get worse all the time, regardless of who is president. It is pretty obvious that heavy capital is really in charge, not The Don, or Lunchbox Joe, and definitely not you or me.