Joe Biden is a dying man. Of course, we’re all dying, so should we be panicked? Each day that we are alive, we move a little bit closer to death. Yet the case of Joe Biden is rather unique, because he is the president of the United States. By all reports, it’s a stressful job that requires a strong physical, spiritual, psychological and emotional commitment.
After yesterday’s debate, CNN commentator John King said “This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now as we speak, there is a deep… a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers. And they're having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they're having conversations about what they should do about it."
Joe Biden is a dying man, and this is what the punditocracy is saying about him. To the average bystander, everything that happened on television last night simply confirmed what almost everyone knew all along, but to the punditocracy, it’s a panic moment. Instead of making plans to live out his remaining years in quiet dignity, Biden has been the president of the United States. He has presided over what remains one of the largest empires in world history and he still has to make not-insignificant decisions about foreign and domestic policy.
In medicine, total pain refers to “the suffering that encompasses all of a person's physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles.” Total pain describes the condition of an individual who has received the prognosis of a life threatening illness. The woman who coined this phrase, Dame Cicely Saunders, also said something else about the final phase of life. “You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life."
Joe Biden is a dying man, and his life will matter right to the very last moment. I doubt this fact matters to members of the punditocracy or to the strategists and fundraisers, many of whom have, for at least five years, argued that he is the most viable answer to Trump. Five years is approximately how long last night was in the making. Not long ago, the Alzheimer’s Society published this statement: “In recent years, there has been a lot of speculation that Donald Trump and Joe Biden may have dementia or some form of mental health condition.” The authors of this article said it would be unethical to speculate on such matters. This is sage advice. Yet for the strategists and fundraisers who helped propel Biden to the White House, whose entire living is about managing public perception in an historical era whose political affairs are mediated to an unprecedented degree by television and video, their preferred candidate has been the object of speculation for a very long time. How could it be otherwise? The cameras are rolling wherever Biden goes. It is nothing less than remarkable that the strategists could not see some kind of final reckoning coming.
The White House has claimed that Biden is a victim of “cheapfakes.” The videos that circulated prior to last night’s debates in which Biden appeared disoriented and confused (at a D-Day memorial in Normandy, to take but one example), had been produced by manipulators who had edited the original footage to mislead the public, or so the White House claimed. These are significant accusations to make. If malicious actors are deliberately manufacturing such content and fooling people into thinking Biden has dementia when, in fact, he is perfectly healthy, then some kind of action should be taken. It’s unclear to me if the White House intends to do anything of the sort. Within the span of a month, the speculation has shifted. It’s no longer about whether or not Biden is healthy enough to be president. It’s about the performance he put in last night and its damning implications for the upcoming election. That shift seems very cruel to me.
Joe Biden is a dying man, and rather than care for his wellbeing—as a whole person—the Democratic Party machinery has used him as their frontman until the act was no longer tenable. I cannot think of any acceptable excuse for this behavior. The most entirely predictable scenario has just unfolded in front of the whole world. It’s calamitous. Stan Goff wrote this morning: “It seems the best we can hope for—speaking now, along with my wife, as retirees on a fixed income—is that the currency doesn’t collapse, the government doesn’t collapse, that inflation doesn’t continue to eat into our diminished purchasing power, that there’s not a nuclear war, and that we’re safely dead before the coming climate apocalypse.”
Total pain doesn’t last forever. The extinguishment of a person’s physical faculties can also be accompanied by healing of other faculties–namely, spiritual and emotional. The last year of life can be the best. This is what I’d like to still believe is possible for western society. The “physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles” of our empire might be drawn out for quite some time. Yet something better must be around the corner. We have to believe it.
Joe Biden is a dying man, in every sense. His presidency is dying, his viability as the 2024 candidate is dying, and surely the hopes and dreams he had personally invested in this cause are now as cold as coffin nails. His administration did some good things: the Inflation Reduction Act, some concerted efforts to curb monopolies, student debt forgiveness, etc. Yet if this period of history continues to be so deplorably mismanaged, that legacy might quickly be burned to a cinder by the conflagration of a second Trump administration. It’s time for a restart. Those of us outside elite circles want an end to the total pain and the chance at a new beginning.
NOTES
“'Deep Panic' Among Democrats after Biden's Debate Performance, CNN Says”
https://www.newsweek.com/deep-panic-among-democrats-after-bidens-debate-performance-cnn-says-1918547
“Embracing Cicely Saunders's concept of total pain”
“Donald Trump, Joe Biden and dementia: Why not to diagnose from a distance.”
“Biden is a victim of ‘cheap fakes’, says White House: What are they?”
https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/joe-biden-is-a-victim-of-cheap-fakes-says-white-house-what-are-they-us-elections-13783935.html
Joe Biden in Normandy