Patrick Lawrence: The End of Global Leadership

It was a long time coming, but the pathological savagery of the Israelis as they exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza announces the end of any claim America and the West altogether have to global leadership on any kind of moral basis, legal basis, or any assumption that the West possesses superior ideals, principles of government, or what have you

GAZA casualties live statistics

There are many photographs of President Biden floating around these days. Maybe it is because, even allowing for his physical decline and his mental incompetence, his minders can no longer keep him so thoroughly out of sight as this, an election year, begins. The picture I am thinking of, carried by the BBC, is a video frame shot at Biden’s Valley Forge speech last week. That was his first outing as he seeks re-election next November.

And there are Joe Biden and First Lady Jill—excuse me, Dr. Jill—standing before the usual prop on such occasions, an immense American flag. Joe smiles out from a mask-like face, blank with what looks like bewilderment. Dr. Jill smiles, too—a frozen smile, but one that suggests she is at least aware of what is going on. Dr. Jill waves, left arm hoisted high. The two are holding hands.

What is it about this image, among so many others, that causes it to linger in my mind? I conclude it was the utter emptiness of the poses and the gestures. I have seen few photographs of prominent pols, and in this case the spouse, so abjectly devoid of sincerity and authenticity.

It has something to do with the moment, too. This is a president who has supplied and financed a proxy war in Ukraine that has failed after killing scores of thousands of soldiers and displacing millions more. This is a president who now sponsors a genocide in Gaza as the world watches in real time—a genocide, do you hear me? This president’s signature project—America will lead democratic nations in a crusade against the world’s authoritarians—is virtually nowhere taken seriously. This is a man who presides with imperial distance over a republic that has tumbled into spiritual and social collapse and extreme economic inequality, all the while displaying more or less complete indifference to this national plight. This is a president facing articles of impeachment based on plentiful evidence that he participated in the influence-peddling schemes of his son and brother.

This is a man who is smiling. At the end of the video Dr. Jill has to lead President Joe off the stage. He does not stop smiling as she does so. I suppose the intent is to encourage as many Americans as possible to assume—to assume without thinking too much—all goes swimmingly as 2024 begins, the outlook altogether hunky-dory. My read of the Valley Forge image is upside down to this. I find the president and First Lady’s fixed expressions, and their evident determination that they must not betray any of what lies behind the smiles, frightening.

This is what “victory culture” looks like when it is videoed or photographed, to borrow Tom Engelhardt’s very useful phrase. When Tom published The End of Victory Culture in 1995, he thought he had written the epitaph for the peculiarly American preference for the illusion of never-ending “wins,” success everywhere one looks. He knows better now, as a revised edition of this fine book makes clear. If I find the image of Joe and Dr. Jill Biden at Valley Forge frightening, I also find it dangerous. And I may as well add, I find it abusive.

This is a time of many defeats for America and Americans. There is the list noted above. The war in Ukraine is out-and-out lost no matter how long and perversely the U.S. and its clients continue wasting lives and money to avoid this truth. The Israelis will prevail on the ground in Gaza, as argued recently in this space, but Israel and America have already lost big, very big, if we think in strategic terms rather than tactically. The Gaza crisis, in turn, has further shredded the social and political fabric at home. Federal and state legislatures, the courts, the universities, the media, rights of assembly and free speech: How far will America go until it recognizes that U.S. support for an out-of-control Zionist state is damage America inflicts on itself?

I look now to a defeat greater than all of these. Ours is a passage in history that, however difficult it is, we must recognize for its sheer magnitude. It was a long time coming, but the pathological savagery of the Israelis as they exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza announces the end of any claim America and the West altogether have to global leadership on any kind of moral basis, legal basis, or any assumption that the West possesses superior ideals, principles of government, or what have you. Israel’s genocide, we had better acknowledge, has many antecedents. In this way the apartheid state, as it exposes its own grotesquerie, also exposes the West’s centuries of sins….

https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/14/patrick-lawrence-the-end-of-global-leadership/

***********************************************

Gaza and the End of Western Fantasy

Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt / South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

Israel killed thousands of children in Gaza. How can so many Israelis remain indifferent? / In Israel, 20,000 Gazans are responsible for their own deaths. I’ve never been so ashamed

Bad Memory

Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims

Palestine and Israel: Historical, Legal and Moral Issues

Philistines & Pharisees

Support South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice

More than 10 children losing legs in Gaza every day as dire health crisis grows

Reading the Bible with the eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, political theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)