Joe Biden’s Jan 6 speech raises some interesting problems. What does he really want to achieve by declaring his foes outlaws? Even if he succeeds in jailing, disqualifying or otherwise delegitimizing his 2024 political opponents, the challenge to “our democracy” he posits will not go away for two reasons. First, the crisis facing the status quo does not arise from one man, Donald Trump, but from the failure of the establishment to deliver across a wide range of issues. Second, the discontent of which Trump is a figurehead now includes significant parts of the electorate and has political strongholds in a number of states.
This means the “insurrection” that Biden wants to stop cannot be decapitated by simply jailing one man because it does not arise from one man nor inhere in a single individual. Any realistic preemptive strike against the rebels must be broader in extent than any process the justice and police system has contemplated so far. If Joe wants to use force he will have to brandish a much bigger gun than heretofore with all the danger of escalation that entails.
I think the answer (at least one of them) is that Joe Biden is not really all that bright. And like many Leftists, he thinks with his spleen rather than with his brain. He is, at heart, a vicious despot. And therefore he does vicious despot things.
Recent political developments become less confusing when we relax the assumption that events are ultimately about America. Ambiguity is the enemy of constitutional democracy, but confusion is the friend of operators and dealers. Perhaps the correct paradigm is not to judge events through the prism of national interest but by the criteria of factional gain. Then a third possibility emerges: maybe 2024 is not about “democracy” or “elections” but a political bank robbery in progress.